


Sent From Above

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Car Accidents, Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Past Attempted Suicide, Past Character Death, Therapy, Wheelchairs, ghost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 98,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21873523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: Meg lost her husband Sam three years ago in a sudden accident and she’s been dealing with the heartache ever since. Finally, she decides to look for help in a grief support group where she meets Castiel, a man mourning the loss of his nephew. They soon become friends, but Meg still feels like having a relationship would be disrespectful for Sam's memory. Castiel is willing to respect her decision… until Sam’s ghost starts haunting him and encouraging him to help Meg to move on.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Meg Masters, Meg Masters/Sam Winchester
Comments: 35
Kudos: 62





	1. Prologue: Derailed

“You know you’re going to have to talk to me eventually, right?”

Meg kept staring out of the car’s window, refusing to turn around. There was really not much to see out there: the road was practically empty, they were going through a stretch of woods and it was dark outside because they had left Dean’s house later than they’d intended to. Sam doubted she could see anything other than some trees and patches of starless night sky, but she was stubborn enough to pretend that was the most fascinating view in the world.

“Meg, come on,” Sam insisted. “I didn’t say it to make you look bad.”

“No?” Meg replied, sharply turning her head at him. “Because the way you said it made me look like some sort of demon that’s denying you the joys of fatherhood.”

“Nobody thinks that!”

“Your mother thinks that.”

There was no point in arguing with her about his mother. Mary had made it clear she thought he was making a huge mistake by marrying Meg, and she sort of… never bothered to correct that impression. Sam had hoped the relationship between the two women would smooth out overtime, but it had been two years and not much had changed. Dean, his brother, also hadn’t really bothered to get to know Meg or get along with her at all.

That was the reason Meg dreaded and hated the family reunions at the Winchester household, but she endured them all the same for his sake. She put on a smile, she tried to start chats with his Campbell cousins and be nice to everyone. Sam appreciated it. He knew Meg’s usual mood tended to be more on the cranky side, she had a dark sense of humor and her sarcasm was her most lethal weapon. He wouldn’t change her for the world, but the downside of her being that way was that people could tell she was faking it when she tried to ask about their kids and whatnot.

And kids had been precisely the topic that had caused her to be angry with him on the ride back home. Mary had been dropping hints all day that she wanted to have a grandchild. Dean already had a kid that was twelve years old (Ben had been sort of a “happy accident” with a girl he was seeing at the time), but Mary really wanted another. Sam had made the mistake of saying “Meg doesn’t think that’s a good idea” where his wife could hear him.

In hindsight, he probably should have worded that better.

“Well, I don’t think that,” Sam said.

“You hesitated.”

“I did not… I don’t think you’re evil for not wanting children, Meg!” Sam insisted when she huffed to signal her disbelief. “I don’t!”

“But _you_ want them.”

Sam went quiet, because there was no denying that. But he really didn’t want to have this argument with her right now, as they were driving home. It was supposed to be the time when they decompressed, when they relaxed after the long afternoon. So even if Meg wanted to pick up a fight, he wasn’t going to give it to her.

“I also want to have a dog,” he pointed out. “You said, and you’re right, that none of us would have time to care for it.”

“That is really not the same thing at all,” she said, shaking her head. “I would think a kid ranks far higher on the scale of dramatic life changes that one is willing to make.”

“Okay, yes,” Sam conceded. “And yes, I do want children, but we’re both working our asses out, paying for the house, so… no one is going to blame us for not having them right now.”

“They already are blaming us, Sam.” Meg let out a bitter laugh. “That’s kind of the problem.”

He went quiet for a while. The conversation had come up a couple of times before and it had always been a touchy subject between the two. He loved Meg. She knew him better than anyone, except maybe Dean. He couldn’t imagine growing old next to someone else.

But every time Meg spoke so determinately against having children, he worried. He had a nebulous idea that maybe someday he might want some, they could wait until they were in a more balanced position in life, there was no rush to get to it, Meg could still change her mind about it, so it wasn’t that important. And if it never happened, it never happened. He didn’t marry Meg with the intention of having children, he married her because she was his best friend.

However, there was a painful pang inside of Sam’s chest that he’d done his best to ignore whenever the topic of children came up. It was getting harder every time, though.

“So you don’t think you’ll want them at all? Ever?” he asked, and he immediately hated himself for doing that.

“I…” Meg started. She closed her mouth and looked at the road for a long while. “I don’t know.”

Well, that was certainly better than the outright denial she’d offered in the past.

Sam waited.

“Look, I was super sure I didn’t want them when I was younger,” she admitted. “But then I had to go and marry you, you fucking asshole.”

He laughed. There was his potty-mouthed girl.

“What I’m saying is… if I can see myself having children at all, it would have to be with you,” she continued. “But I still don’t know if that’s a good idea. What if I don’t like being a mom, huh? That’s not fair for the kid.”

“I think… the fact you worry about it so much is exactly what would make you a good mom,” Sam pointed out.

“Oh, shut up,” she groaned at him and Sam laughed.

He knew the issue was far from resolved, but this was a good point to drop it. The tension inside of the car lifted finally and now they could enjoy the drive back home in that quiet summer night.

He reached for the radio and turned it on.

_… it’s getting dark, too dark to see_

_Feels like I’m knocking on Heaven’s door…_

“Really?” Meg asked, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t love it,” Sam said, smiling.

“I like the version that isn’t boring as all hell!”

Sam chuckled and then started singing along to Bob Dylan:

_Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door_

_Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door…_

“You suck at singing,” Meg complained, but a second later, she opened her mouth and started singing along:

_… there’s a long black cloud coming on down_

_Feels like I’m knocking on Heaven’s door…_

Sam saw the light coming from her side. It illuminated the inside of the car like a sudden flare, like a halo around Meg’s head, lightning up her dark hair with golden glints. She had her lips opened and she was laughing as she sang the lyrics and Sam had a second, maybe two, to think that she was beautiful.

Then the light became blinding, too hot, burning up in his eyes.

The entire car shook and the seat belt sank on his neck and shoulder with violence. Meg screamed by his side, or he thought he heard her scream, because it was hard to hear anything over the din of metal and glasses breaking down all around him. Panic clouded his mind as he gripped the wheel tight, his feet stomping uselessly on the pedals as they spun and spun out of control. The pavement was now the sky and their wheels were sliding on the darkness that had been above them a moment before.

_Crash, crack._

The car landed upright again and stopped moving altogether.

It felt like an eternity, but when Sam opened his eyes, Bob Dylan was still singing over the melody of his guitar.

_… knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door..._

“Oh, God!” Meg shouted somewhere to his right. “Oh, fuck, Sam?!”

Sam wanted to answer to her, but his head felt weird. It felt light. The space around him looked strange even though it was still his car: everything was compressed and weird and broken.

“Sam!” she shouted again.

He could see her, but barely. The lights that had blinded him a moment before were still flashing behind his eyes, making his vision blurry. He could make out her hands moving around desperately, he could hear her sobs.

But as much as he willed himself to, he couldn’t move his body to reach for her or to try to take out the belt or… do anything. It was like his brain was thinking about these actions, but his body was just not getting the message at all.

Meg was talking to someone now.

“911, what’s your Emergency?”

“We’ve been crashed, my husband… please, hurry!”

He’d known Meg for twelve years. He’d heard her laugh, he’d heard cry, he’d heard her angry. He hadn’t realized until now that he’d never heard her like this: scared. Terrified. Her voice stuttered and broke as she told the operator where they were and begged once more for them to hurry up.

“… help’s on the way, ma’am. Are you hurt?”

“That doesn’t matter!” Meg screamed. “My husband’s not waking up and I don’t know what’s wrong!”

Sam ignored the light still blinking in the corner of his eyes and focused his sight on her. Her side of the car seemed to be completely destroyed, the metal bended and the windows cracked, with shards of glass spread everywhere. There was blood trickling down her face, from her forehead and down her cheek. She kept moving, trying to manipulate the belt, but it wasn’t budging.

“Meg,” he called out, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

Meg let out another cry, loud and frustrated. She gave on trying to get the belt open and simply stretched herself over to reach out for Sam. Her hand came to rest on his arm… but he didn’t feel it.

Sam looked down. He could see the outline of her hand on his skin, but he couldn’t sense its warm, not even when she squeezed. The light was flashing again, so he groaned and shook his head. He couldn’t be distracted by it. There was a strong, instinctive pull to look at it, but he refused. He needed to focus on Meg.

“It’s okay,” he told her. He wished he could lift his hand and brush her hair or hug her or do anything else but keep repeating words that she apparently wasn’t listening to in her distress. “It’s going to be okay, Meg. I’m going to stay, right here with you.”


	2. Absence

Meg woke up trembling only two hours after she’d fallen asleep. It was summer, but she was cold anyway, and yet her skin was covered in sweat. She was tangled in the sheets from hours and hours of rolling over, unable to sleep a wink. And now she was awake, she knew there was no point in trying to fall asleep once again. The morning light sipped in underneath the window pane, alerting her that it was too late to pretend that day was not coming again.

For a long while, she did nothing. She laid with her head on the pillow, staring at the minutes ticking by on the alarm clock next to her bed, hugging herself and thinking how wonderful it would be to just avoid the world for a couple more hours. Or a couple more weeks. People talked about having lumps in their throats, but she had an entire rock stuck somewhere on her chest, right behind her lungs, that weighted down on her and wouldn’t allow her to move unless she did a monumental effort that she didn’t know if she had the energy for.

The clock went off. The red numbers blinked over and over as the buzzing, annoying sound echoed on the room’s empty walls. With a sigh, Meg stretched her hand to turn it off and forced herself to sit up on the mattress. She grabbed her legs, one by one, to throw them on the side of the bed and pulled her wheelchair closer to start the day.

Adapting to her life after the accident had been a slow process. However, if someone had asked her what had been the hardest part, she would have said getting the hang of not being able to walk had been the easy part. Yes, it had been a while until she’d learned how to use her wheelchair without bumping into things. Yes, she had, in more than a couple of occasions, fallen and hurt herself or found it easier to just crawl around instead of trying to get back up on the chair. Yes, cooking and doing the laundry was a hassle now, because everything in the house had been designed for people who could stand. She hadn’t even seen the inside of her upper cabinets in three years.

It made her heart ache to think that, three years prior, she would have simply had to yell at Sam for him to come over and get whatever it was she needed. Her husband had towered over her at six feet tall and though she never would have admitted it, she missed how tiny he made her feel sometimes. She missed his broad shoulders and his big, strong hands. She missed how protected she felt between his arms.

Meg cracked an egg and scrambled it without any real energy. She didn’t feel like eating, really, but she knew it would be worse if she didn’t eat anything at all. She had a long day ahead of her and she might as well use the time she needed.

“I can’t give you the day off, love, I’m sorry,” Crowley had said, even though he’d previously said it wouldn’t be a problem. “I would have to pay extra to people who are not as efficient as you.”

The lying, cheap asshole.

“Crowley, come on,” Meg had replied. “I asked you for this weeks ago!”

“And I wasn’t able to find anyone to cover your shift!” Crowley replied, with the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Why do you need the day off anyway, darling? Do you have somewhere to be?”

Meg hated having to say it out loud. She hated calling people’s attention to her situation, to the fact she was a grieving widow. Having to say anything about it was humiliating, because people’s pity was as useful as a handful of salt on an open wound. Having to say it made it more real, it didn’t allow for her to forget and pretend that nothing had changed like she did sometimes.

But she wasn’t above using it on people who irritated, especially Crowley.

“It’s the anniversary of my husband’s death,” she’d said, hoping her voice sounded appropriately sad. “I’m meeting with his family at the cemetery.”

There’d been a long silence at the other end of the line.

“Oh,” Crowley had said, finally, and Meg knew right away that this meant she was going to get away with hers.

“It’s fine, though. I’ll just cancel with them and go by myself on my next day off…”

“There’s no need to do that,” Crowley had said, quickly. “I just remembered I didn’t ask Charlene if she was available. Maybe she can cover for you.”

“That would be great, thanks,” she’d replied and she tried to mean it.

She would have meant it, too, if her boss wasn’t a heartless pig that just didn’t want to be perceived as a heartless pig. Meg had earned some power over him because she was the best one at enduring tired and angry clients who’d just got off from a twelve-hours flight and did not like to hear they would have to wait thirty extra minutes for their transfer to arrive. It was a combination of absolutely not giving a fuck about them and their complaints, and not giving a fuck whether she lost this job or not. Most of her trainees ended quitting in tears, but she had been going strong for a year and a half now.

When she was a teacher, she wasn’t sure she would ever miss being locked in a room with two dozen hyperactive kids who only wanted to cover every inch of clothes within their reach with as much paint as they could or with a bunch of retired old ladies who couldn’t draw worth a damn but they were sure they had missed their true artistic calling and didn’t take constructive criticism very well. Her jobs were constantly on the line come the next school budget cut or the next time someone complained about her to the community center director, but she’d done it because what else was she going to do with an Arts major? And at least that was tangentially related to her passion.

This job was boring, repetitive and sometimes taxing. The pay was shit and her boss, as proven, was an asshole. But she could do it from home with just an Internet connection and a phone. Yes, she had to interact with people sometimes, but they were mostly strangers she would never hear from again, so she didn’t have to care about what they would think of her. Since she was able to endure as much abuse as the clients wanted to unleash without breaking, more often than not the newer recruits ended up passing the calls to her, so Crowley couldn’t fire if she asked for one damn day off in advance.

It was perfect. And she hated it.

She took her coffee mug and scrambled eggs to the coffee table in the living room. She hadn’t been in the dining room in a while. They had thrown a couple of dinner parties there for the people at Sam’s firm around Christmas and he had hinted he was hoping to make that into an annual tradition. Meg had spent the first Christmas after Sam died at Mary’s house, receiving condolences and feeling shitty, and the following one crying at and getting drunk on cheap champagne. She had felt no less shitty, but at least she didn’t have to deal with people telling her how sorry they were for her loss and comparing how miserable she was with Mary and Dean, so she was thinking of making that her annual tradition.

She turned on the TV and mindlessly watched the news. There was apparently nothing of major interest going in the world, because the reporter was showing a swimming class for overweight dogs.

“… it’s a great time for owners to interact with their pets and they get some exercise from it too!” the trainer was saying as the camera panned over a bunch of dog in little lifejackets, all of them wet and some of them looking pathetic and unhappy. “It can also be beneficial for dogs with joint problems…”

“You would have loved this,” Meg commented looking at the empty green mug on the coffee table.

Sam was a tea drinker. It was healthier than coffee, he insisted, and it came in a variety of flavors. The day he died, right before he left, he had been drinking a mug that he left on the coffee table, intending to wash it when they got home.

When Meg had come back from the hospital, alone and in her first wheelchair that was uncomfortable and that she didn’t know how to stirred, she’d cried when she picked it up and washed it. Then, in the middle of the night, she’d woken up in a cold sweat, crawled downstairs because she hadn’t installed the elevator yet, grabbed the mug from the cabinet and put it back on the coffee table.

If someone had asked her why, she wouldn’t have been able to explain it. She had been possessed by some sort of uncontrollable anguish, by an impulse she couldn’t control. She couldn’t stop thinking about the mug and she hadn’t moved it since. Whenever she needed to talk to Sam, she looked at it as she did.

“I should have let you get a damned dog,” she told him, as she sipped her coffee. “We would have made it work, somehow. You would’ve made like a little schedule so we could take it out on walks…”

She choked up and stopped talking. It was a good thing maybe that they hadn’t got a dog after all. Because if the mutt had grown attached to Sam, it never would’ve understood why he didn’t come home after that night. And Meg wouldn’t have been able to talk it out on walks now, that was for sure. She had lost so much already that it was better not to think about what else she would’ve had to hypothetically give up.

“It doesn’t matter now, I guess,” she said, after swallowing her tears with the rest of her eggs. “Oh, you would not guess who I saw in the store the other day. Remember Brady…?”

She did this a lot. She didn’t know if it was a healthy thing or not, to talk to Sam as if he was still there with her, but she didn’t feel like stopping it. If she stayed quiet in that too empty house, she would have gone crazy within the first three weeks of him being gone.

She shivered again and looked up the A/C. She’d had someone come look it over, because the house was always strangely cold, even in summer days like this. They had not been able to find anything wrong with it, but Meg still got randomly chilly here and there.

Maybe there was something wrong with her. It wouldn’t have surprised her. Her entire body had been thrown out of whack after the accident, but she had seen enough doctors and hospitals for whatever was left of her life. She wasn’t going to go back for something she could easily fix by putting on a jacket.

Honestly, she didn’t feel like going out today. If it was up to her, she would have just laid down on the couch and slept for the rest of the day. She was tired, her head hurt and she was already regretting having that coffee. It shouldn’t be too late to call her paratransit and let them know that she was cancelling…

Her TV turned off suddenly, startling her. Almost at the same time, a honk came from outside, alerting her that the morning had gone by faster than she’d thought. It was too late now to back down. She grabbed her phone and texted the paratransit driver to wait out for her. She left the dirty dishes on the sink on the way to the garage. She grabbed the gardening scissors as she waited for the automatic door to lift.

The paratransit was parked on the driveway and Benny was driving that morning, thank goodness. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the other drivers, but she appreciated Benny the most. He was more patient and he didn’t make unnecessary comments about Meg’s health or life as he helped her with the harnesses and the chair.

“Good morning, Meg,” he greeted her with his familiar southern drawl. “Are you ready?”

“Just give me a second.”

If it had been another driver, they would’ve complained that Meg was going to make everybody late, but Benny just smiled kindly at her as she moved towards the rose bush. The garden, like pretty much the entire house, was a mess. Sam had been the one to keep it in line. He said that it relaxed him.

After his passing, Meg didn’t have the physical or mental energy to work on it or the money to hire a gardener. As a result, the grass was always tall unless one of the neighbor’s kids offered to cut it for her and the flowers had either withered or grown wildly and out of control. The HOA people were not happy about it, but they’d got off her back when she threatened to sue them for emotional distress.

The white rose bush, miraculously, kept blossoming every year. Meg cut one of the flowers, put away the scissors on her backpack and rolled towards Benny.

“Okay,” she said, with a sigh. “Let’s go.”

* * *

She was the last one to be left off at her location. Benny extended the ramp and gently back down when Meg rejected his offer to push her. That was why she liked him. Other drivers would’ve got chatty or tried to ask her who she was going to see. Instead, he just said:

“Take all of the time you need, suga’.” And waved at her as he drove away. Meg hoped it would still be his shift when she needed him to come pick her up to drive her back home.

The sun was scorching and her arms got tired after rolling through the cemetery gates. By the time she reached the plot where Sam was buried, she was sweating and doubly regretting not just staying home. Nobody would’ve blamed her if she did.

She had lied to Crowley that she’d planned this with Sam’s family. After that first year, she had slowly lost contact with them. It wasn’t like they’d had a big fight or anything, she just never called them and was always curt when Mary or Dean or any of the Campbell cousins tried to contact her for any reason. She hated how they kept asking if there was anything she needed or if she wanted them to come over to help her with anything. Eventually, after too many refusals, they had finally got the memo and stopped calling her altogether. Which was a relief, because all they really did was remind her that the only reason they had a relationship was because of someone who wasn’t there anymore. Meg could already do that all by herself every day, thank you very much.

In any case, it didn’t feel right to not visit Sam’s grave on that day. If she’d got away with hers, she would have had him cremated or had one of those natural burials where they just put him on the ground and planted a tree on top of him. With how much he loved gardening, she believed Sam would have liked that. But Mary and Dean had insisted on doing a traditional service and burial and by the time they had got around discussing the details, Meg had been exhausted and angry and in so much pain, both physical and emotional, that she’d just let them do whatever without putting too much of a fight.

_Sam Winchester_

_May 2, 1983 – July 5, 2015_

_Beloved son, brother and husband_

Meg leaned over and left the white rose she had cut next to the gravestone. She wasn’t religious. She didn’t believe Sam’s soul was in a better place, though, if there was a Heaven, he surely had got in. She would’ve felt like a hypocrite praying, so instead she sat there in silence for a long while, until she was sure she wasn’t going to cry when speaking:

“I miss you, babe.”

There was not much else she could say. She didn’t want to sit there all morning and think about what a great thing she’d had going with Sam and how much she’d failed to truly appreciate it while she had it. She could do that in the comfort of her home.

She maneuvered her wheelchair to turn around…

Dean was standing a few steps behind her, with a flower crown in his hands. His light brown hair was parted to the side and his big green eyes were opened in surprised. He’d put on an actual suit and jacket, which immediately made her feel terrible about her jeans and shirt.

They stared at each other for several seconds, without saying anything. Meg was pretty sure Dean was experiencing the same awkward feeling as her. They were too people who, at best, had nothing in common and who, at worse, had been downright antagonistic sometimes. The only thing they had in common was how much they had both loved Sam.

And for the sake of his memory, Meg decided to make the effort to be civil.

“Hello, Dean…”

“How are you…?” Dean asked at the same time. They both stopped talking and let another awkward silence fall between them. “Umh… hi,” Dean stuttered in the end. “You didn’t tell me you were coming. I would’ve picked you up.”

“Didn’t want to bother anyone,” Meg said, with a shrug. “You came here alone?”

“Yeah, mom is on a road trip with her friends,” Dean explained. “And I didn’t want to make Ben late for school, so I told Lisa she didn’t need to come.”

“Oh?” Meg crooked an eyebrow. “So you and her are…?”

“Working things out,” Dean replied and it sounded like he wanted to leave it at that.

It surprised Meg. Dean wasn’t an entirely absentee father, but one of the reasons he wasn’t still together with Lisa was because, as Sam put it, he had a severe phobia of commitment. If they were working things out for the sake of the kid, well… a lot had definitely changed in those three years.

“Good for you,” Meg said. “I’ll leave you to have a moment with your brother.”

She tried to roll past him, but Dean called her name once more.

“Hey, stick around,” he told her. “I, uh… we could go for lunch or something and then I could drive you home.”

Why the hell was he inviting her? They weren’t friends. He probably thought she was pathetic and sad and he should do something nice for her. Well, fuck that. She didn’t need his company.

“That’s not necessary. I’ll just call my transport…”

“Meg,” Dean interrupted her. “Listen, I know we’ve never been exactly close…”

“I would say,” Meg replied, surprised that he’d acknowledged it out loud instead of passive-aggressively pretending otherwise.

“But you’re probably the only other person who misses Sam as much as I do,” Dean continued, ignoring her comment. “So… have lunch with me, please?”

Well, dammit. He had a point there. Meg bit the inside of her cheek for a moment, thinking if it would be worth it to argue and to insist that she needed to go home, but then again, what for? To sit in front of the TV and feel sad? Having lunch with Dean could delay that fate for a while, at least.

And also… Sam would be happy to know they were getting along now, even if it was only to honor his memory.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait for you at the gates.”


	3. Coincidences

He took her to some random burger joint that she’d never been at. When they arrived, Dean got out of the car, took a few steps and then apparently remembered that Meg couldn’t just follow him. She made sure to give him the stink eye when he finally realized and came back to take her chair out of the trunk with a mumbled “Sorry”.

At least the restaurant had a ramp.

“So, how you’ve been?” he asked after the waitress took their orders.

“Same old,” Meg replied, because she was not about to admit just how empty and sad her life was. “Just… working.”

“Right, do you still paint?” Dean asked. He’d taken off his jacket and now he was loosening his tie, like the formal, cemetery-visiting outfit was starting to itch. Meg figured he didn’t intend to wear it for so long in the July heat. “I remember that year you gave my mom one of your paintings for her birthday. She really liked that.”

Meg wanted to reply that if she liked it so much, then why had she failed to put it up on the wall and why had she found it on the attic a few months later when Mary had asked her to bring down some Christmas’ decorations. But no, she was trying to be nice. She was trying to get along with Dean. For Sam’s sake.

It was amazing that even though Sam wasn’t there anymore, she still felt an obligation to be nice to his family.

“Painting’s been… it’s been good, yeah.”

That was a bald face lie. She hadn’t picked up a pencil, much less a brush, in ages. She’d tried. When she was still trying to pretend that her life hadn’t changed forever, that she could still find some of the old Meg somewhere, she’d really tried. But her hands trembled when she tried to even draw a line, and all she’d managed was to stare at the blank page in front of her, unable to see the picture in her mind, unable to find something deep in her to put out there.

She was a shell of a woman pretending to still have a soul, but Dean didn’t need to know that.

“Great. That’s… I’m glad.”

The waitress brought their burgers. Meg grabbed hers and shoved as big a bite as she could in her mouth to avoid having to answer any more questions. Sadly, it seemed like Dean had the same idea. So that was another awkward pause that they had to deal with. Meg didn’t know how many more she could stand before she started screaming out in frustration.

“Actually, I was… hoping I would see you. I’ve been meaning to call you for some time,” Dean revealed. “But I think this is better, talking face to face.”

Meg hoped her astonishment didn’t reflect in her face. She wanted to keep her aloof and calm nature. She wanted Dean to think that she was okay. Well, not okay, but not bad enough that he would need to feel obligated to try and keep contact with her again.

“What did you want to talk about?”

Dean put down his burger and looked at it, pensively.

“That… that night at the hospital.”

He didn’t have to clarify which night he meant. It was the only night that had mattered for the both of them.

“What about it?” Meg asked, and she was sure she had sounded a lot more somber than she needed to.

“I… talked about it with my therapist. A lot.”

“You’re going to therapy?”

“It was Lisa’s idea,” Dean replied, defensively.

Of course, Dean Winchester wouldn’t be caught dead talking about his feelings unless he was literally being forced to by the mother of his child. It made a lot of sense.

“Anyway, it’s not so bad and… yeah. He told me that I need to let go of certain things that happened then,” Dean explained. He made a pause so long Meg wondered if she would look insensitive if she started eating again while he thought about it. “So that’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Well, good for you,” Meg said, and stole a French fry from his plate.

Three years ago, Dean would have jumped at her throat for something like that, for even dare to covet his food. This time, he just kept looking her closely with those big green eyes of him. He didn’t look a lot like Sam. They were both very handsome, true, square-jawed and tall. Sam, however, had a sort of boyish charm to him that Dean had never been able to achieve. But he had been charming, in his own way. Always smiling and trying to be the soul of the party.

Nothing like the various serious man sitting in front of her right now. He took a deep breath and looked right at her.

“I… forgive you.”

The words disconcerted her enough to get her to stop moving, with the second French fry halfway through her mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“I forgive you,” Dean repeated. “I was angry with you for a very long time, but I see now that you made the best decision you could at the time. So, I forgive you.”

Him saying it a third time was infuriated Meg. Not that the first two times were any less stupid, but there was something about the way he said it again that just made the sliver of good will she’d been sharing with Dean up and disappear in the air.

“Oh, fuck you!”

Dean moved back in the chair. That was clearly not the reaction he’d been expecting.

“You think I care what’s your opinion about the choices I made that night?” she screamed, before she could control herself. “I did what was best for Sam!”

Dean’s face grew red. For all the therapy and soul-searching, he claimed to have been doing, he lost his temper quick.

“You didn’t even bother to ask us!”

“I didn’t have to ask you! That decision was mine to make!”

“He wasn’t just yours, you selfish bitch!” Dean replied, now screaming at the top of his lungs.

“You know what, Dean? I might be a selfish bitch, but you’ve always been a condescending motherfu—!”

The din of glass shattering echoed through the diner.

Meg could have sworn her drink wasn’t that close to the edge of the table and that she hadn’t made any sudden movement that would explain it falling over. And yet, there it was, a pool of water in the middle of several shards as a waiter and a man with a little plaque that identified him as the manager ran up towards their table.

“Sir, excuse me,” the manager said, shooting a stern look at Dean as the waitress leaned over and started cleaning up the mess. “But I’m gonna have to ask you and your friend to leave…”

“That’s fine!” Meg replied. She was mad, her fury raging like a fire, and she didn’t particularly care at that point who she directed it to: Dean, or the trucker that had T-boned their car, or Sam for dying, or the manager that had just completely ignored her. “We were done here anyway!”

Having through navigate among the tables and keep her head up as people turned to stare at her didn’t exactly make her storming out dramatic or easy, but she was already out of the joint and down the ramp by the time Dean called her name again. She cursed herself for failing to follow up on the exercises her physical therapist had recommended. Maybe she would have been able to roll faster and away from Dean before he caught up with her and stood in front of her chair.

She glared at him.

“Move or I will fucking run you over.”

“Why do you have to be such a…?” Dean started, but he stopped himself mid-sentence, pinching his nose. “Okay, just… let me drive you home.”

“Why?” Meg groaned.

She didn’t know exactly what she was asking. Why did he care how she got home? Why was he still acting like they had something, anything, in common and needed to stay in touch? Why should she give a shit about what he felt guilty about or not?

Dean answered the most pragmatic way.

“Because I said I would.”

“Fuck off,” Meg replied, rolling her eyes. “I’ll get home by myself.”

“Fine by me!” Dean shot back. “Stay here and have strangers ask you every five seconds if you need help!”

Meg detested that he knew that was a thing that bothered her. She vaguely remembered complaining about it on a family meeting and one of the Campbell cousins replying: “Oh, but I’m sure they mean well!” Dean probably remembered the way she had chewed up that guy’s head right afterwards.

She hesitated. On the one hand, she wasn’t sure she could stay another minute in Dean’s presence without the urge to punch him in the face overcoming her. On the other, she was already on edge from the discussion on the restaurant and she was certain that one person asking her anything would cause her to blow up.

She decided to take her chances with Dean. At least, if things got bad again, she could open the car’s door and throw herself on the street.

This time Dean didn’t put her chair on the trunk, but on the backseat, perhaps because that would mean he could unload it faster that way and she would spend less time in his car. That was perfectly fine by her. Once inside, she crossed her arms over her chest and pointedly refused to look at him. When Dean turned on the radio, she promptly turned it off. Not for any particular reason. She just wanted him to feel as uncomfortable as she was.

It worked a little too well.

Dean parked in the driveway and stared at the garden. Meg almost wanted him to make a comment about how bad it looked, just so she could scream at him some more, but he didn’t.

“I’m… sorry about how things in the restaurant turned out,” he said. “That was… that was really not how I was planning that to go.”

Meg clicked her tongue and she hoped that was enough of an indication for him to get that she was not going to entertain him any further.

Dean finally got out of the car, took her chair out and pushed it towards her. Meg ignored the hand he extended towards her to help her get out. At that point, she would’ve been just happy to crawl up the driveway if it meant getting away from him faster.

But Dean had apparently decided that her day wasn’t bad enough yet, so he insisted on ruining it some more.

“Meg…”

“Oh, my God, what?!” she snapped at him. “You’ve said your piece. Can’t you just leave me alone now?”

Dean had the decency to stare at his shoes and look just slightly guilty.

“Look, I don’t want to fight with you,” he stated. “You were someone Sam cared about.”

“Yeah, well… Sam’s not here anymore.”

She felt cruel saying it. She wouldn’t have been able to explain why. She was just pointing out a fact they were both more than well aware of. Still, the way Dean winced at her words somehow pierced through her cloud of anger and made her feel the slightest pang of guilt in her chest.

She suppressed it before she did something her pride would never let her live down, like apologizing.

Dean, however, didn’t acknowledge her jab. Instead, he took out a little card from his jacket’s pocket.

“This is something that helped me out,” he said, handing it to her. “I hope it helps you out too, even if you can’t stop being a bitch for five minutes.”

If he hadn’t insulted her, Meg probably wouldn’t have even grabbed the card. Dean being an asshole, she could deal with, because that was what she was used to. Him actually trying to be nice? That was almost downright upsetting.

_In Remembrance_

_Grief Support Group_

“Are you serious right now?” Meg said, arching an eyebrow at him.

“Just thought you could use it.” He shrugged.

“Well, thank you.” Meg rolled her eyes. “That’s very considerate of you. Let’s see each other again… does never work for you?”

She turned her wheelchair around as she ostensibly balled up the little card and threw it over her shoulder. She didn’t regret doing it. After how patronizing Dean had been about through the entire encounter, she couldn’t be assed to care about whether he thought she was a bitch or not. It didn’t matter anymore.

Dean sighed but she didn’t turn around. She remained with her eyes on the automatic door, waiting for it to open and refusing to acknowledge the fact that Dean wasn’t getting in his car and driving away. If he said anything else to her, she was going to pretend she hadn’t heard it.

She got in as soon as the garage door was high enough for her to pass through. She immediately pressed the button on the remote control so it would close behind her.

Still, she didn’t hear the roar of Dean’s engine until she was inside of the house. She peeped through the curtains to watch his dark Chevy Impala driving away down the street and only when it disappeared in the horizon, she let out a breath of relief.

“Your brother is an asshole,” she said out loud.

She’d told this to Sam many times through the years, and Sam had always jumped on Dean’s defense: yes, he could be a bit of a jerk, but deep down he really cared a lot and he was sure if they gave each other a chance…

Well, now she didn’t have to, and that was fine by her. She didn’t need Dean’s faux concern about her mental or emotional state. She was fine, functional, which was more that could be said of those first few weeks after Sam’s passing. It had been hard enough getting to that stage, what more did people want from her?

“Fucking condescending idiot,” she mumbled as she waited for the water to boil over. “Did you hear what he said, about the forgiving me thing? Can you believe that?”

She thought she heard a rustle behind her back. She turned around, but obviously, all that greeted her was her big, empty house. There must have been a breeze blowing or something, because the curtains were flapping slightly in the air and the kitchen had grown cold again. She grabbed the kettle and poured herself a tea before rolling away towards the couch.

The green mug at the edge of the coffee table taunted her.

He had been nagging at her before they left. He had been telling her they were going to be late. He hated being late. She could still see him standing in the living room in his socks, holding that same mug while she ran back and forth from the room, holding different blouses and asking his opinions on them.

“They’re all fine,” Sam had said, over and over. “Just pick one.”

“Well, excuse me for not wanting your cousins to judge me,” Meg had snapped back, irritated.

“They don’t judge you, they just…” he’d started saying, only to sigh and take another sip. “You should have picked one the night before.”

By that point, Meg wanted to tell him that she had, in fact, picked a blouse the night before, but she was second-guessing herself. Because she always second-guessed herself when it came to his family. All other things in life, she didn’t care. She was confident when it came to her work, to her passion for art, to her certainty that making the bed every single day was unnecessary even if Sam didn’t agree. When it came to his family, though, she always caught herself hesitating.

Because they didn’t like her. No matter what Sam said, she knew they barely tolerated her for his sake. In their opinion, she didn’t measure up to Sam’s previous girlfriends. She wasn’t nice like Jess, she wasn’t classy like Sarah. When she was in front of Dean or Mary and she did or said something wrong and watched their faces contract, she doubted herself.

They always made her feel like she wasn’t good enough for Sam. And maybe they had been right.

Even now she couldn’t stop dwelling on Dean’s words, on the meaning behind them…

“Fuck Dean,” she said out loud. Her tea tasted bitter in her mouth, so she put it down. “I made the right call.”

And that was that. Even if it wasn’t, there was no point in dwelling on the past. She turned on the TV and browsed through the streaming screen until she found something mindless to watch. Some show about people making cakes. It didn’t even matter as long as it filled the silence.

She woke up hours later to the “Are you still watching?” screen flashing in front of her, shivering. There was still sun outside, but her teeth were chattering and her entire body felt numb. She hugged herself, breathing in and out slowly. It wasn’t strange for her to wake up feeling cold. She had asked her doctors about it, but they insisted that there was nothing wrong with her physically that would make her feel like that.

So the only other option was that there was something wrong with the house, some cracks somewhere that allowed the wind to blow inside or maybe the A/C just randomly spat some air despite her rarely turning it on. She kept meaning to look into it, but her job kept her busy enough that she kept putting it off… and even in her free days, she couldn’t find the energy to do much more than what she was doing right now.

She still had half a mug of tea left, but of course it had grown cold. She leaned over to pick up the mug…

There was a piece of paper on the coffee table that she didn’t remember being there before. She picked it up and turned on the lamp next to the couch.

It was the damn grief support group card that Dean had given her. She was sure she had crumpled it and tossed it away and sure enough, it was creased and dirty like it had been.

It hadn’t been her. Had it? She clearly remembered throwing it in Dean’s general direction as she rolled into the garage, but she could’ve been wrong. Maybe she meant to throw it but had been too busy rolling up the driveway to actually do it. Maybe she’d absentmindedly put it in her pocket and then took it out and smoothed it over while she watched TV.

It wouldn’t be the first time that she found something around the house wasn’t where she thought she’d put it.

She looked at the little card and shook her head. A support group. Fuck that. What did Dean know? Why did he care? He could wave that whole “Oh, you were important to Sam” bullshit all day long; it didn’t really change anything. The fight in the burger joint had proved that.

She rolled to the kitchen, put the mug down on the dishwasher and threw the card away in the trash bin.

She was absolutely sure she threw it in the trash bin.

But she must have been wrong, because the next day, she found it on the night stand when she woke up.

“Come on. Get it together, Meg,” she muttered to herself. She grabbed it and placed it inside of the drawer, along with a bunch of other useless things that she kept meaning to throw away but never did.

Or did she? She didn’t remember putting in her jeans pocket, but a few days later, while she was emptying them to throw them in the washer, she found it _again_ , along with a bunch of linen and some change.

“What the hell…?” she said.

This was getting annoying. She didn’t know why she kept failing to get rid of the thing. She was not going to no stupid group support or counseling or therapy. She didn’t need that shit.

This time, she made sure to rip the card into little pieces before she threw it in the bin.

She forgot about it with the passing weeks. She kept her mind occupied with the transfers and shuttles for people who came and went around the world. To compensate for taking the day off, Crowley put her in the night shift for a while, but joke was on him, she had insomnia anyway.

Sometimes she felt strange being awake in the middle of the night, knowing those people were the only ones who knew she was alive at that very moment. They were complete strangers that only called her to complain that they would have to wait fifteen extra minutes, that their driver had been rude and a thousand other little minutia.

She took it in stride, but sometimes she couldn’t help but to want to scream. Did they know how lucky they were to be wherever they were? Did they know they were lucky to be alive?

“My wife has back problems!” a man was screaming at her. “The way this driver conducted himself was unacceptable!”

Her first instinct was to scream at that guy that he was lucky to still have a wife at all, but on the other hand, she didn’t feel like getting fired on that particular day.

“Sorry you feel that way, sir,” Meg said, in her most neutral costumer support voice. “We can advise our drivers to be more careful in the future, certainly, but there is nothing we can do about the state of the roads in other countries.”

That at least gave the asshole pause for a few seconds. However, he was just one of those people who was mad about something and he needed someone to unload all that rage on.

“Well, you should have warned us this was how things were before we travelled here!”

“Sir, I think you have the wrong service,” Meg said, rubbing her temples. “I will gladly connect you to your travelling agenc—”

The lights above her head turned off without a warning and so did her computer screen, plunging her into sudden darkness.

“Sir?” she called out, but it was obvious her Internet connection had died off with the rest of the electricity.

She cured under her breath and left her headset on the table before turning towards the window.

The streetlights outside were still on, glowing orange over the deserted pavement. She could see clearly the houses across the street, all the way to the cul-de-sac on the other end. Dammit, had she forgotten to pay the electric bill? Or worse, was there something wrong with the fuses? The mere idea of dragging herself down the basement stairs made her feel exhausted, but she couldn’t abandon her shift.

She also couldn’t cross the street and ask Sid to come take a look at them like he’d had in a couple of occasions out of the goodness of his heart. It didn’t matter how much he pitied her, she doubted he would appreciate being woken up at two and a half in the morning.

Going through all of those considerations must have taken her a minute, less than that. She hadn’t yet decided what to when the light came back on, just as randomly as it had first gone out.

“Welp,” Meg muttered to herself and rolled back to her laptop.

It was weird that it had been turned off, though. She thought it had enough battery left that a sudden outage wouldn’t affect it, but she must have wrong. She stared at the black screen while it booted back on, tapping the edge of the table with her fingers. She was certain the asshole she was talking with must have called again and filed a complaint about the operator who had hanged up on him, she needed to get in front of that…

The screen froze. Meg cursed under her breath and tried moving her mouse, but it wasn’t really working. Goddammit, was she going to need a new fucking computer? She didn’t have the money for that right now!

“Come on, bitch!” she screamed, tapping at it.

It reacted this time, but she must have had a virus or something, because the Internet browser opened up on its own volition.

And it must have been a very specific virus, because it immediately opened the page for a grief support group.

_In Remembrance_

_Grief Support Group_

The same fucking one that had been in the card that Dean had given her.

“Are you fucking serious?” Meg muttered.

She tried to move the cursor towards the closing button, but it just… wouldn’t obey her. Every time she approached it, it would move again and the page would remain open, staring at it with its cursive letters, its ugly green pastel colors, its tacky design…

The time and address for their next scheduled meetings. It didn’t seem like they were too far away. She could take the bus there. Yes, it was a pain in the ass because there was always some asshole taking up the handicapped area but she wouldn’t even need to call her paratransit and…

Nope. She wasn’t going to go. She didn’t need it.

She finally regained control of the cursor and closed the window. She was about to turn her attention back onto her job, when the In Remembrance page opened again.

Meg stared at it, half furious and half startled. She didn’t believe in an afterlife. She didn’t believe in supernatural phenomenon at all. She didn’t believe there was a god or gods guiding her actions, that coincidences were more than just coincidences.

But if she had believed on that, she would have suspected someone was sending her a very strong message about this damn group. And they were not going to budge until she did what they wanted.

That, more than anything, was the sign that she maybe needed some therapy after all. What the hell.

“One session can’t hurt,” she muttered as she wrote down the address.

The rest of her shift went without a hitch.


	4. Empathy

Meg hesitated on the library entry.

Coming all the way there had been such a fucking ordeal that she was certain that alone was going to convince her not to chicken out at the last second. She was wrong. Once she was actually off the bus and on the door, she was having second thoughts.

She was tired and assigning value to random coincidences. _No one_ wanted her there, except Dean and he could go sit on a cactus. Why was she there anyway? She was fine. It wasn’t really _fine_ , but she was fine. She didn’t need this. What could she tell to a bunch of strangers anyway, what could she possibly share? They hadn’t met Sam; they didn’t know what it was like for her.

She should turn back now and go to the bus stop. Maybe she would be home in time for the afternoon news…

“Excuse me.”

She had been so lost in her thoughts the gravelly voice startled her a bit. She turned her head to see a man standing close to her, wearing a casual jeans and a white shirt. He was tall… well, Meg’s assessment of people’s height was off for a lot those days, but she was sure he would’ve been taller than her even if she had been able to stand next to him. His dark hair was a mess and there was a furrow in his brow, but his blue eyes seemed kind enough as he asked:

“Do you need help?”

“Actually no, for once,” Meg said. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to look defensive. It wouldn’t be the first time a well-meaning stranger ended up doing something awkward in the name of “helping her”, like pushing her chair without their damn permission. “The ramp is right there.”

“I can see that,” the man said, calmly. “But you’ve been here for several seconds now and I was wondering if you were trying to find a specific address or…?”

Meg uncrossed her arms.

“Is this the… the place for the… the group counseling… thingie?” she asked, feeling very much like an idiot as the words left her mouth.

“It is. Are you coming to it?”

“I’m… I…” Meg stuttered and forced herself not to look away from the man. She couldn’t explain why, but it suddenly mattered to her that this random stranger wouldn’t know she was nervous about going in. “I think so,” she concluded.

_Great job, Meg. He definitely doesn’t think you’re an idiot now._

He didn’t mock her for it or told her this might not have been the place for her. Instead, he nodded as if that was a very logical thing.

“I was nervous on my first meeting as well.”

Well, was that supposed to make her feel better? Because… it kinda did.

She scratched her arm pensively, trying to gain time for gathering all the questions she really wanted to ask.

“Does it help?” she asked, and immediately wanted to kick herself, because she didn’t need help. Her admitting she needed help would’ve been akin to admitting Dean had been right and she was never going to do that.

“It does, if you let it help.”

“That sounds like bullshit,” she commented, rolling her eyes.

She was still waiting for him to give her an excuse to leave. If he had been rude or lost her cool at her comment and skepticism, that would have been enough for her to say that she tried, but people were assholes. Not that anyone was going to hold her accountable to it, except for herself, of course.

But she wasn’t going to be so lucky. The man smiled at her, warmly.

“A lot of it sounds like bullshit,” he agreed. “But you have to learn to take what’s useful to you and apply it and just… ignore the rest.”

That was actually some very practical advice that she could get behind. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“I’m Castiel, by the way,” he introduced himself, extending his hand towards her.

“Meg,” she said. She was tempted to ask what kind of name was Castiel, but she figured he must have got that as much as she got questions about her wheelchair.

“Well, Meg, if you’re going to come inside, you should do it now,” he said, after quickly checking his phone and immediately sliding it inside his pocket again. “Billie doesn’t like it when people are late.”

Billie turned out to be a very stern-looking black woman. Her dark eyes darted towards Meg, but when she told her what she was there for, her features softened and she welcomed her to the section of the library where the meeting would be taking place.

“Move your chairs, please. Make space for her,” she instructed the rest of the group while Meg filled out the form that she’d given her. She had to write down “name of the decease”, “relation” and “date of death”. All very clinical.

There was half a dozen people there, counting her. Some of them shot her quizzical looks as she joined the circle. Ah, the awkwardness of being the new kid on the classroom. She had not missed that at all.

Castiel sat on the other end of the circle and smiled at her encouragingly.

“Since it’s your first time here, Meg, don’t feel obligated to share,” Billie said, sitting at the head of the circle and taking out a little black notebook and a pen. “Would anyone like to start?”

The question at least served so people would stop staring at Meg and would instead fix their gazes on the overflowing shelves or the black and white pattern of the floor. So, definitely like school when the teacher asked a question no one wanted to answer. She also avoided Billie’s gaze. If she had the chance not to talk, she was not going to and they couldn’t make it.

“Castiel?”

She looked up. Castiel was slowly putting his hand down and he looked a bit startled, like he hadn’t realized he’d put it up to begin with.

“You haven’t been here in a while,” Billie told him. “So I’m surprised to see you.”

“Yes, I’ve… cut back on my personal therapy sessions because I thought I was doing very well,” Castiel said. He suddenly seemed a little sheepish, but he continued going. “Yesterday I was… going through some old boxes… I couldn’t even tell you what I was looking for to begin with… and I found Jack’s acceptance letters.”

“His acceptance letters?” a blonde girl to his right asked.

“Jack was my nephew, my brother’s son, but I ended up raising him from a very young age.”

Meg shouldn’t have been surprised by that. Even if it wasn’t for the context in which he was telling this story, the way he talked, the pain in his voice, the way the light in his eyes seemed to dull…

Well, it just hit her that this man had essentially lost a son. He’d called him his nephew, but the obvious weight of his grief suddenly made hers look stupid by comparison.

“He had a very aggressive type of leukemia,” he continued telling. “In that last year, when we already knew he didn’t have much time left, I offered to take him out of school, to go on an extended road trip somewhere or blow my savings into an extravagant experience that we might both enjoy. He said he didn’t want his last year to feel like a goodbye tour, so instead he kept doing normal things: going to school, doing his homework, taking his SATs. He applied for half a dozen different colleges and they all accepted him. He was a brilliant boy.”

Castiel’s voice broke down. Meg hadn’t realized that he’d began crying until he buried his face in his hand. The atmosphere in the small library space suddenly felt heavy and strange. The man next to him extended his hand and patted him in the shoulder, a gesture of consolation that looked pathetic compared to the enormity of what Castiel was telling him.

“Thank you, Max,” Castiel muttered as the blonde girl extended a tissue package towards him. “Thank you, Jo.” He blew his nose and even though he really didn’t need to say more for everybody to get the gist, he went on: “He graduated high school top of his class, but his conditioned worsened over the summer. He died in September. He never got to go to any of those colleges. He was just eighteen years old.”

“Oh, shit.”

Meg didn’t realize she had spoken until she noticed some heads turning in her direction. Her face felt like it had suddenly caught on fire, but Castiel didn’t seem annoyed by her comment. In fact, he chuckled.

“Yeah, that is correct. I thought I threw those letters away years ago, but there they were, stashed in a box, waiting for me to find them again.”

Billie took some notes in her little black book.

“What did you do when you found the letters?”

“I sat on the floor and cried for two hours.”

A completely appropriate reaction, in Meg’s humble opinion. She wanted to cry just from hearing the story and she hadn’t even met the kid.

“It keeps happening,” Castiel said, with a sigh, after several seconds of him swallowing and struggling to talk some more. “I donated his clothes and his books, but I keep finding things that belonged to him around the house. Small trinkets or mementos he kept for the sake of it. He collected… pebbles with interesting shapes or little superhero figurines. He was a bit of a hoarder and it seems like he hid them all over the place. And every time I find one, it hurts like hell. In a way it’s like he’s still present, like he’s still with me.”

Meg had to bite her tongue. Not only because she had a sudden lump in her throat, but because she felt the same about all of Sam’s items in the house. And she hadn’t donated a single thing. It wouldn’t have even crossed her mind to take Sam’s clothes out of the closet or the enormous law tomes he kept on the bookshelves. Granted, she’d never broke down crying just because she randomly bumped into one of his possession, but it still hurt a little to see them. The only thing worse would’ve been to see the empty space they would leave if she threw them away.

Because that way she would’ve been accepting he was really gone. And she didn’t want to have to do that.

Jo discreetly extended the tissues towards her, but Meg shook her head and swallowed loudly. She wasn’t going to cry in front of all those strangers, dammit.

“The letters hit me differently because… they’re the future he never got to have. It’s not fair that he died so young, it’s not fair that he never got to experience so many things. I thought I was fine, but this just… awakened a lot of feelings in me. Not just sadness, but anger and resentment as well.”

“You shouldn’t think of this as a setback at all. Grieving is not a linear process,” Billie explained. “The five stages of grief are a bit of a cultural myth, as I’ve told you. But when a person we love passes, we experience a bunch of jumbled emotions all together and it can be overwhelming. What you need to understand, all of you, is that we can go back and forth from being in control of our emotions to them getting the better of us and it’s natural and it’s okay. There is not a set timeline for when to be ‘fine’.” She drew air quotes as she said this. “And you have my permission as a counselor, to tell anyone who tells you otherwise to go fuck themselves.”

The laughter was light and timid, like people didn’t know if they were really supposed to laugh at that. Meg decided she liked Billie well enough.

“Anything else you want to share, Castiel?”

Castiel seemed to think about this for a moment.

“I think I’m good.”

“Alright, well, just remember that we’re always here to support you,” Billie said and moved on to look at the other members of the group. “Anyone else?”

The other’s stories were not any lighter. Jo’s father was a policeman that had died in the line of duty and she was struggling with the thought of going to his precinct’s memorial for him. Max and his sister Alicia were both grieving their mother and Max struggled to communicate with her about it. Alicia had decided not to come to the group anymore.

“I don’t know how to talk to her,” he said. “I don’t know how to tell her that we’re in this together, you know?”

“Just telling her that might be enough,” Billie assured him. “Nobody has to go through pain and grief alone, even if they think they do. You can always reach out to someone and it’s important that you do.”

The other man on the group, Aaron, had recently lost his grandfather and the last one, Linda, was a widow like Meg. Except she had been married to “Mr. Tran” for much longer and they had a seventeen-year-old son.

“I want to be strong for Kevin,” she said. “I have to be strong for Kevin.”

Meg winced at the mention.

“Meg?” Billie asked. “Did some of what Linda said resonate with you?”

A lot of what all of them had said had resonated with her. Oddly enough, the story that had hit her the hardest had been Castiel’s, for reasons she couldn’t really explained.

She didn’t say that out loud. She still didn’t know how she felt about this whole crying in front of strangers thing, even though everyone else seemed to have no issue with it. She’d got choked up a couple of times, but she had managed to keep herself together so far.

“No. Sam and I didn’t have any kids.”

It was as if every gaze in the room was suddenly on her. Had they all been waiting for her to say anything at all, like they were all curious about her presence there but had been able to keep it together for the time being.

“Sam was your husband.” Billie said it with such a matter-of-fact tone that Meg wondered how many grieving widows she had met in her life.

“Yup.”

She had no idea what else to say after that.

“Do you want to talk to us about him?”

“Not really,” Meg said. She wondered if she should have been a little less blunt, because she noticed Aaron and Jo exchanging a quick look, like they were judging her. “I just… came to see what this was all about.”

“Well, I hope some of what was said here helps you anyway,” Billie said, calmly.

She didn’t ask if Meg would be coming back. Which was good, because Meg wasn't sure she would have otherwise. It wasn't that she hated it, like she thought she was going to, it was just... a lot. A lot of emotions, a lot of thoughts she didn't want to deal with. She had boxed up her grief deep inside of her where it couldn't bother anyone and she was unsure of the benefits of opening that up and letting it out.

It would be ugly if she ever did.

"That's all the time we have for today. I will see you next Friday. If anyone needs me to recommend extra help, you know where to find my number..."

Meg backed away from the group and turned around to navigate the bookshelves before Billie finished up her spiel. She needed to get out of there and go sink on her couch with some hot tea for the rest of the afternoon. This had been far more draining than she'd thought.

"Meg!"

Castiel caught up with her on the entry, just as she was sliding down the ramp. She stopped at the end of it to wait for him.

"So, how was it for you?" he asked.

She shrugged. Yes, he was handsome and kind, but she wasn't ready to share her thoughts with him either.

"It was... interesting."

He nodded, as if that was precisely the answer he waited from her.

"I had my doubts too, when I first started coming. I promise you, it gets much better when you actually start feeling ready to share."

"Yeah?" Meg quirked an eyebrow. "And when exactly does that happen?"

"It happened around session number three for me, but everyone grieves differently."

He also didn't ask if she was coming back. He didn't ask any questions about Sam. He simply said:

"So do you have someone picking you up or...?"

"I'm taking the bus."

"Do you mind if I walk with you to the stop?"

"Why?" Meg asked, crossing her arms over her chest, defensively.

He stepped back the second she did, so he could at least read a cue. That shouldn't have felt as refreshing as it did.

"Just thought you could use the company. I know when I first finished a session I was feeling... a bit raw."

Meg stared at him, doubting. She felt exactly that way and she had no idea if having him in her space while she was processing all of this would be a good or a bad thing. Part of her wanted to put her shields up, to be alone and think. Another part just wanted to be distracted from it all and she figured making small talk with him would be a way to do that.

"Okay," she agreed in the end. "But only to the bus stop."

"Of course. My car is parked that way anyway."

Meg turned her chair and wheeled down the street, with Castiel keeping his pace at her side.

“So, Meg, what do you do for a living?” he asked, casually.

“I talk on the phone and endure shouting and abuse every day from disgruntled clients.”

She didn’t know why she answered that in the most incredibly frustrating way possible, but she didn’t mind that Castiel laugh at it.

“Ah, call center work. Do not miss it.”

“You worked at one?”

“There’s no a lot of options out there for a college dropout in charge of a toddler,” he replied, nonchalantly.

Meg winced at the mention. If Jack had been eighteen six years ago when he’d died, then that meant that Castiel couldn’t have been much older than him when he started taking care of the kid. He looked older than Meg (forty, forty-one?), but maybe that was because of the little crinkles that formed around his eyes when he smiled.

“Yeah, well… it is what it is, right?” she said. It was a pathetic comment, but Castiel was kind enough not to point it out to her.

They reached the corner where the bus stop was. The sun was going down behind the surrounding buildings and the street was busy with people coming out of their jobs or going to the store. People living their lives, just going about their day. Castiel stood right next to her, with his hands inside of his pocket.

“Well, here we are,” Meg said.

“Yes, it appears so.”

She unconsciously tapped the armrest of her chair. She didn’t know how to nicely let him know that he should get lost now. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to be nice to him in the first place. Was it because he had done the same for her? Was it because she knew he was grieving the loss of what had been for all intends and purposes his son? Castiel stood there, smiling at her, and she wondered if he would lose it if she told him that she wanted to be alone now.

Probably not. He didn’t look like the kind that was secretly a dick, but one could never tell.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked, and that was harsher than she intended, so she immediately softened her tone. “I mean… aren’t you going to be late for dinner or…?”

“I have no one waiting for me at home,” he said, with a shrug.

“Come on.” She tilted her head. “Good-looking guy like you doesn’t have a girl waiting for him at home?”

She immediately wanted to kick herself for saying so. She wasn’t flirting with the guy. She was in no way whatsoever interesting in flirting with him. She had been a huge flirt when she was younger, to the point that had been her default method of engagement whenever she met a new guy, but that had all stopped when her relationship with Sam had become serious. Even if it hadn’t, she wasn’t a hot twenty-something now trying to make a guy flustered for her amusement.

If Castiel took it as flirting, however, he didn’t show it. He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck, but he didn’t stutter or blush.

“It’s not easy to meet people,” he said, and he left it at that.

“I guess not.” Meg shrugged. “Couldn’t tell. Haven’t really tried it. I’m a respectable widow and all of that.”

“Oh, of course. Wouldn’t want the townspeople to think poorly of you and brand you with a scarlet letter.”

That made her laugh. Goddammit, she wasn’t trying to laugh, but he managed to pull it out of her with such ease, to match her dark humor without seemingly getting offended or angry at her comment like others would have…

While she suppressed her laughter, she noticed Castiel craning his neck up and looking in every direction.

“Looking for someone?”

“Yes, I… I thought I saw someone I knew,” he said, a bit too quickly for her to believe him. He probably hadn’t seen anyone, but he was looking for an excuse to stop talking to her. And wouldn’t you know it, and old friend of his was just walking down the street and he needed to go say hi to them right now… “But I must have been wrong.”

He smiled reassuringly at her. Damn, she didn’t know what to make of this guy and it was making her uncomfortable.

Luckily for her, the bus happened to come down the street at that exact moment.

“Well, here comes my very luxurious ride.”

“Ah, just on time to protect your virtue and your reputation.”

The bus driver groaned when he saw that he was going to have to come out and operate the lift. Castiel waited patiently with her for the entire operation with her and she was glad for it. She was sure that the driver wouldn’t have stopped if he thought it was only her waiting there, because when she was up, he turned to Castiel and asked:

“Aren’t you getting in?”

“No, just accompanying my friend,” Castiel said with a smile.

Maybe having him hanging around her had its upsides.

“Well… good luck, Meg,” he said while the driver got back behind the wheel.

“Yeah, I guess…” Meg started, but the door snapped shut at that precise moment, cutting it short.

“Get in your designated area, lady,” the driver groaned at her.

Meg rolled her eyes and maneuvered through the crowded space between the seats, ignoring the angry stares of the people who obviously thought she had only brought her wheelchair on board to annoy them.

Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. She had been about to tell him that she was going to see him next week, and if she had, then she would’ve felt obligated to keep her word. She didn’t think Castiel would’ve particularly cared or blamed her if she didn’t, but just… now she could say without guilt that she had gone to the damn group session and that she had decided it wasn’t for her.

The empty house greeted her with its usual silence and hollowness when she rolled inside.

“I’m home!” she called out.

Obviously, no one replied.

She reheated some leftovers from the day before and brought it to the couch. A usual Friday night for her. She didn’t know why she was feeling so weird about it.

Maybe because it had been a while since she’d gone out and done something like this. “This” being, interacting with people. People who weren’t at the other end of a phone or who didn’t drop by her house with a casserole that she had made too much off but she knew it was just an excuse to check if she hadn’t died.

Billie had said she didn’t have to go through it alone.

“You believed in all of this mumbo-jumbo,” Meg told the green mug at the edge of the coffee table. “Do you think I should keep going?”

Even as she said the words out loud, she knew exactly what Sam would’ve said.


	5. Breakdown

It didn’t take her three, but five sessions to “feel like she could share”, as Billie put it. In the first few ones, she just felt like her issues were going to take too much time and others had more important things to say, more pressing matters that required attention. So she only answered the occasional question when it came as shortly as she could and mostly listen to what the others had to say.

Kevin, Linda’s son, started going to the sessions too around mid-August because he was leaving for college next month, and well, kid needed a chance to talk more than she did. Then, Alicia, Max’s sister finally came and she took up nearly of all of the session weeping about how Max and her mom had always got along better and Max weeping back at her that they’d never meant to exclude her, so naturally, they had to let them because “that was a safe space in which to express emotions.”

Then, before she’d even realized it, September rolled around.

“Jack’s seventh anniversary is coming up next week,” Castiel said. “I’m not… I’m not having the easiest of times.”

It sounded like the understatement of the century. He looked pale and there were dark circles under his eye. His face was obscure with stubble he either had forgotten or just didn’t care to shave. He kept nervously moving his hands, pulling from his shirt, toying with whatever he had within reach.

“It’s important to have rituals to remember our loved ones,” Billie told him. “It’s healthy to know that we’re going to give ourselves some time to honor them. Do you have any rituals planned, Cas?”

“His friends are coming over to my house. We’re having a pizza party in his honor. They were a tight-knit group of friends who were all very young when we lost Jack and I think it affected them a lot too. I was… a bit of a mess when it all first happened and they couldn’t all come to Jack’s funeral because most of them had left for college already. However, three years ago, after I had some medical issues myself, I contacted them and we started this tradition to commemorate him.”

“That sounds like a very nice tradition.”

“Yes, I think their parents didn’t approve of it at first. And I’m not going to lie, it was awkward. I felt like a creepy dude, hanging out with all of these youngsters I’m not related to.”

There were some uncomfortable chuckles around the group, as if they weren’t sure whether should really be laughing or not. Castiel didn’t look offended that they did, so Meg didn’t repress hers.

“But overtime, I just… feel good when I see them, when I hear what they’re doing with their lives. They’re all young adults now, just starting to find their footing in life, and they know they can call me, ask for my advice or my help whenever they need it. It’s good for me to have this role of…” He waved his hands around, as if he didn’t know how to describe it exactly.

“Like a mentor?” Billie suggested.

“Yes, precisely.” Castiel nodded. “They don’t replace Jack, by any means, of course, but my relationship with them does fill a void. I don’t think, even if I do get married in the future, that I will want to have any children on my own. But I have them and that’s more than enough for me.”

“Then that’s what you need to focus on with the Jack’s anniversary coming up,” Billie told him. “Focus on the present, on the positives that you have in your life right now. What you want to keep, what keeps you going.”

Meg tried to do what Castiel had told her the first time they met: to sort through the bullshit and just take what was important to her. This advice, however, had been brought up a couple of times before and she just didn’t know what to do with it. Making it useful for her life was like trying to shove a squared peg in a round hole, because there was simply nothing in her life that she wanted to focus on.

Her job? She hated it. Her friends? Well, she couldn’t remember when was the last time one of them had called them and if she was being honest, they were mostly Sam’s friends anyway. She wasn’t on speaking terms with her brother, she hated every one of the neighbors at the HOA, her body had changed irreversibly and she wasn’t sure she was ever going to get used to that reality. What was sadder, she hadn’t picked up a pencil or a brush since the accident. What was there in her life for her to focus on?

She didn’t like thinking about that. She didn’t like admitting that she had isolated herself and let her sorrow slowly beat her down to where she was now, because that would be akin to admitting she felt any sorrow at all.

So instead of accepting how uncomfortable it made her to even think about it (“Safe space for feelings”, yeah, whatever), she laughed again as if Billie had told some kind of funny joke.

The stares she got were downright murderous.

“What’s funny, Meg?” Billie asked, in her cool, deep tone of voice.

“Oh, nothing. I’m just thinking about how pathetic I am,” she said, shrugging.

“Right, we’ve talked about your isolation before,” Billie pointed out. “Have you been working on it like we’ve recommended?”

Meg had no idea when had they discussed their isolation. She had no idea she had shared enough in the group for Billie to deduce that she was isolated at all. And dammit, she was not going to let the woman turn her therapeutic crap on her like that when she still “wasn’t ready to share”.

“Nope. Not much action in the dating scene for a wheelchair-bound thirty-something with a crappy job.”

“It doesn’t have to be a date if you’re not ready for that,” Billie said. She either didn’t pick up on Meg’s sarcastic tone or she was simply ignoring it to impart some actual wisdom. “You mentioned before that you used to be an art teacher, yes?”

“What about it?” Meg asked, unable to stop her defensive tone.

“Have you looked into going back into that? Finding an art group, helping at the community center you used to work at…?”

“Why the hell would I do that?” Meg said. Billie opened her mouth, but Meg’s temper had reached its boiling point. “No, seriously, tell me. What is the fucking point of me doing any of that, doing of this?”

“There must be a fucking point, or you wouldn’t be here,” Billie replied, bluntly.

“Well, there isn’t!” Meg shouted. “Sam, the life we built together, that was my purpose, my cause! And now he’s gone and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with myself!”

She couldn’t keep screaming because the tears were choking her. And it didn’t matter how much she tried to stop them, this time they weren’t listening to her. It was like a dam breaking, like a storm that had been threatening to start at any moment finally letting the waters pour all over the ground. She hid her face and tried so hard to collect herself, but the sobs just kept on coming and coming and she couldn’t do anything to contain them…

Someone was at her side, a strong, large hand on her shaking shoulders.

“It’s okay. Meg, it’s going to be okay…”

It was Castiel. She could have sworn he was at the other end of the circle, but now he was right there by his side, rubbing her back with his big, comforting hands, assuring her she didn’t have to feel ashamed for crying.

Meg felt ashamed of it anyway. Even though she was sure she had seen every single person in that room except for Billie cry at one point or the other, she had never done it. Maybe because she had felt a twinge of contempt for them. Look at all those adults, falling apart and crying like children. She was prouder than that. Yes, it hurt like hell and she missed Sam, but she had been able to keep herself together.

Until now.

And she felt like an idiot for it. She was a hypocrite for ever having thought that she was different than them. The only reason she didn’t “share” was because she was afraid of this exact thing happening.

But also…

It wasn’t terrible. When she was done crying and her make-up was probably ruining beyond repair and she had used up all the tissues that were handed to her, she didn’t feel terrible for having cried. Her head hurt, but it was strangely lighter than it had been before. Oh, God, how long had she been freaking out? Five minutes? Ten?

Castiel was still by her side, with his hand on her shoulder and telling her over and over that it was okay. She wanted to ask him to give her a hug, because, God, it had been so long since someone actually hugged her, let alone a man and damn, she hadn’t realized until now how much she missed having a pair of strong arms holding her and making her feel tiny and protected at the same time.

She was also aware they had only known each other for a little over a month. He walked her to the bus stop every week and they joked together sometimes, but that was the extent of their relationship. They weren’t friends. They weren’t anything.

All those people were nothing to her. And yet when she opened her eyes and looked at them, she didn’t see pity in their faces. She didn’t see them cringing at her. She just saw some deep understanding. Linda was even nodding, like she was certain that Meg was going to blow up at any second and this was all very expected and normal.

Billie was very calm about it too.

“It sounds to me like you haven’t started to rebuild your identity,” she said, with the same tone Meg sometimes used when her students were being thick little shits. “When someone who is important to us dies, a part of our identity that was tied to our relationship with them dies with them. Trying to establish who you are or who you were outside of that relationship is a first step towards healing.”

“How the hell do I do that?” Meg blew her nose. “I knew Sam for… twelve years? We were married for two, but we knew each other long before we got together.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She and Sam had slept together the first night they’d met, on a Halloween party on their freshman year in college. Sam didn’t do one night stands, but Meg didn’t do relationships so they kept being friends with benefits now and then. Sam returned to her every time he was in between relationships. So they had always been something a little more than friends, a little less than lovers.

And then, after he’d broken up with perfect Sarah Blake, he just hadn’t really left.

“I can’t believe you put up with that stuck-up bitch for as long as you did!” she’d laughed that morning after he’d spent the night at her apartment after the break-up.

She was cooking breakfast in her pajamas and Sam was still laying down naked in her pullout couch. Her apartment was so tiny that she could have been anywhere and they were still able to carry a conversation in a normal tone of voice. What was more, the walls were so paper thin that they would’ve been able to talk even if he was in the next apartment over. It was all she could afford, but she was incredibly proud of it. It was her space, after not really having one in her entire life.

“She wasn’t all that bad,” Sam had said, though there was a twinge of relief in his voice. Meg knew him all too well. “I mean, she had her moments. She was smart, she was sophisticated…”

“And her dad has a gallery and she’s friends with all of these cool new artists, have you heard of them…?”

Sam threw a pillow that hit her in the back of her head, so of course Meg had to drop everything, grab the pillow and jump back on the pullout couch to retaliate with a tickling attack. Later she’d had to throw away the eggs that she’d been trying to scramble, but it didn’t really matter when Sam’s laughter rang in her ears and when he grabbed her and pulled her down with him again.

“You can’t be mad. You introduced her to me,” Sam had reminded her, like they’d never interrupted the conversation for other activities.

“Yeah, I thought she was your type. And I swear, she wasn’t that annoying when she wasn’t dating you. It was like you flipped the bitch switch on her.”

“Or maybe she started to annoy you because you were hanging around her more often.”

“I guess.” Meg rolled her eyes and blown a puff of smoke in Sam’s face. God, she used to smoke like a chimney back then. “Why didn’t it work out, though?”

She never asked that. When Sam told her he’d broken up with a girl and if he could come over, Meg never asked exactly what had happened. She felt it wasn’t her business. But curiosity got the better of her this time.

Sam had thought about the question for a long while.

“She just wasn’t the girl for me,” he concluded with a shrug and lassoed his arm around her waist again.

“He was my best friend,” she told the people at the support group. “I never thought about having the kind of life he wanted, with the picket white fence and the fucking home owners’ association. But I did that for him. And now I’m at this big empty place every single day and I don’t even know how to begin accepting that he’s not there. He was tall, he was big, he had… this presence about him. I guess it makes sense the space he left behind is equally as big.”

She was speaking nonsense, but nobody seemed to be stopping her so the words just kept pouring out of her mouth and she didn’t know how to make them stop.

“What happened to him?” Max asked and the others glared at him. Was that a question one wasn’t supposed to ask? Meg didn’t know and she didn’t care.

“We were coming home that night. It was the Fourth of July, we had been at his brother’s house for a barbecue and some fireworks. And it’s… it’s so unfair, because Sam always drove carefully. He was the kind of person who wouldn’t start the car unless everybody was wearing their seat belts, never drove over the speed limit, never ran a red light. He didn't even have a beer that day.”

She stopped to take in a shaky breath, hoping that she wasn’t about to break down again.

“And this fucker of a truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and T-bones our car in the middle of the road. I broke my spine and I can’t walk anymore because of it, but people kept telling me I’m the lucky one because I’m still alive. I don’t feel lucky. I feel like the world would be a better place right now if I had been on the driver’s seat and died instead of Sam.”

She went quiet after saying those words. She had thought about it plenty of times, but she had never expressed it out loud. She didn’t have anyone to express it to, to begin with, but still…

“You’re experiencing survivor’s guilt. It’s very common in these type of cases,” Billie assured her. “What you need to remember, Meg, is that your life has value. What you can do for others has value. What you can do for yourself has value. Sam is dead and that is terrible, but you don’t have to bury yourself alive with him.”

Holy shit, was that what she had been doing? It was, wasn’t it? Hiding in her house, cutting all contact with their old friends and essentially with the world… had she been punishing herself because she’d survived and Sam hadn’t?

She blinked at Billie, tempted to ask her to elaborate on that.

Billie shut her little black notebook.

“That’s all the time we have for today.”

Meg didn’t even bother to hide how relieved she felt at that announcement. She rolled her chair back as fast as she could and she was hauling ass out of the library in less than a second.

She didn’t even stop to exchange a look with Castiel. That was how awkward and uncomfortable she felt with the entire ordeal.

Of course, he still caught up with her on the entrance.

“Meg. Meg, wait up.”

Meg halted her wheelchair and took a second to take in a deep breath.

“I’m… I’m really not in the mood right now, Cas,” she said.

Castiel stopped a few steps away from her and raised his hands slightly, showing her his palms. It was a peace-offering gesture and Meg felt a little like she was an angry stray cat that he was trying to approach for some reason.

“I don’t mean to bother you,” he assured her. “You just seemed… a bit upset in there.”

“Yeah, well…” Meg lowered her eyes. Goddammit, this was like being trap in some sort of nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. “Sorry I stole your thunder.”

He blinked at her owlishly.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on,” she groaned. “You were there telling stories about your nephew and his friends and how you’re helping them and whatnot and I had to go and ruin it by making a complete fool of myself.”

“You didn’t make a fool of yourself,” Castiel assured her, but Meg was really not in the mood to hear about how the group was a safe space for feelings and whatnot.

She didn’t want to confront her feelings. Because they were too intense, too big, too damaging. Maybe she was a coward who didn’t want to confront her hurt, but dammit, that was her prerogative and no one had any right to tell her she needed to do otherwise.

She was fine how she was. No, she wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t crying all the time for no reason either, so she was going to count that as a win and leave it at that.

“Listen, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Really. You seem like a really great guy and what you went through…” She stopped short of saying she thought what Cas had lost was worse than what she’d lost, because she knew he was going to outright deny it. “But I just… I can’t. I can’t do this.”

“You mean the group sessions?”

He seemed more confused by the second and Meg couldn’t really blame him. She wasn’t even making any sense to herself.

“I just need to go home.”

To his credit, he was very respectful of that.

“Do you want me to wait for the bus with you?” he offered.

“I think… maybe not tonight,” Meg told him. “I… have a lot to think about.”

Castiel stared at her for a second longer, as if he was trying to think of a reason or an excuse to wait around with her anyway. However, in the end, he backed off.

“Can I give you my number?”

“Why?” Meg asked, looking at him, confused.

“In case you feel… like you need to… talk to someone,” he said. He seemed nervous, for some reason and Meg had the impression he kept on looking over her head, to someone who was behind her. However, his eyes were soon enough back on her, as intense as ever. “I just want you to know that someone has your back.”

Meg sighed.

“Would it bring you peace of mind to do that?”

“It would, yes.”

Meg thought about refusing. About blowing up at him, accusing him of trying to pick her up or something. But she was still tired from her freak out earlier, so she couldn’t conjure up the energy to be mad at him. And also… it wouldn’t have been fair. Castiel wasn’t asking her for her number, he was offering his for her to contact him only if she wanted to. She wasn’t planning on doing because why the hell would she, but she handed him her phone anyway.

He quickly punched his number in it and immediately handed it back. He didn’t make any comments, but Meg knew he must have seen her sunrise screensaver. She used to have a picture of Sam and herself there, but it was too hard to look at every time she unlocked her phone, so she’d changed it to some generic nice picture she’d found on Pinterest.

She was half-waiting for him to ask about this, but he didn’t. He simply sank his hands in his jacket’s pockets and say:

“Remember…”

“Yes, yes, you’ll be the first one I call,” Meg replied.

She turned her chair around and moved it as fast as she could. A part of her was certain that at any moment she was going to hear Castiel’s steps coming behind her, disregarding what she’d asked him to do. And maybe then she would have an excuse to blow up at him, to scream at him that she didn’t need his pity, that he didn’t need anybody.

But when she finally parked her chair underneath the usual bus stop, she realized she was alone. She looked over her shoulder, unable to contain her curiosity… but Castiel wasn’t coming towards her. On the contrary, he was still standing there in the street, with his hands in his pockets and a deep frown. He looked almost angry, but he wasn’t looking back at Meg. On the contrary, he was looking past her, like he was staring at someone behind her…

The bus stopped and Meg let out a sigh of relief. She didn’t even care that the bus driver was rude to her for the millionth time. All she knew was that she was one step closer to go back home. To be able to close the door behind her and have a conversation with her husband without anyone telling her she was weird and wrong for doing that. Without anyone telling her she needed to move on.

To be fair, Billie hadn’t exactly said that, but what was the point of the group if not that?

Well, she wasn’t going to. She didn’t need to.

She leaned back against the window, and without meaning to, she looked back at the street just in time to see Castiel running towards… something. Someone she probably didn’t see because the bus turned the corner right at that very moment.

Which meant she didn’t have to think about it anymore.

Which, of course, meant she wouldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the night.

* * *

Castiel waited until Meg was safe inside the bus, and then he confronted her stalker.

“Hey!” he screamed at the tall guy standing on the corner, watching the bus drive away from them. “Hey, you! Big guy!”

The guy startled and turned around, his eyes opening wide as if it somehow surprised him that Castiel was talking to him.

He’d seen it every single week when Meg came to the sessions. He thought he might have been confused, but no, he was the same guy who consistently wore the same thing. Jeans, a plaid shirt, a jacket, long brown hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was a big part of why Castiel insisted on walking her to the bus stop every time. The man didn’t ever do anything, he just… stood around, staring into Meg’s direction in such. Sometimes Castiel didn’t see him, but that could only mean that he stood in a more discreet place.

Castiel had told himself over and over that the guy was harmless. He never approached Meg, if she noticed his presence, she never made any comment about it. If someone had asked him, Castiel wouldn’t have been able to point out what exactly bothered him about him. It was just that he was always there when Meg came to the bus stop, watching her silently… something about him that unnerved Castiel.

“Look at me! What do you think you’re doing?” Castiel asked, walking up towards him.

He was at least a head taller than Castiel, but maybe if he caught him by surprise (as it seemed like he had, if the guy’s expression was anything to go by) he took him down in a fight.

He didn’t know why he’d chosen that particular night to confront him. He had thought about telling Meg about him, but he knew from experience that she was already going through a lot without adding this and maybe he was just making a mountain out of molehill. But after seeing Meg’s breakdown, he felt protective of her in a way he hadn’t before. She acted like she had everything together, but deep down she was obviously still very vulnerable, and well…

“Are you… are you talking to me?” the guy asked, stuttering.

“I don’t see anyone else standing here!”

Maybe he was just angry. Angry because he couldn’t help Meg, because she kept him at arm’s length, because he could see just how hurt and alone she was and he was desperate to help her but he couldn’t. And maybe this guy was just a convenient target for his rage.

But he wasn’t giving him what Castiel wanted.

He was standing there, staring at Castiel with eyes wide open as if he was in awe.

“You can see me,” he mumbled, like it was the most amazing thing that had happened to him.

“Of course I can see you!” Castiel replied. What was this guy playing at? “You’re hard to miss and you’ve been stalking my friend! So if you don’t back off…”

Someone laughed behind him. Castiel turned around to see a couple of teenagers passing by and looking at him, laughing with their hands behind their hands.

“Sir, how drunk are you?” one of them asked.

“Leave him alone, Andy!” his friend replied.

The confusion Castiel experienced was like a bucket of ice over his rage. He turned towards the stalker and then to the teenagers.

“You can’t… there’s… he’s standing right here!” he stuttered.

The boy who’d asked if he was drunk laugh again, but the smile on the other’s face dropped.

“Oh, God, are you okay?” he asked. “Are you having like, a breakdown, man? Should we call someone?”

“No! I’m not having a breakdown!” Castiel shouted, losing his patience. “I’m talking to this guy…”

The teenager laughed again and his friend elbowed him. Castiel turned back to the stalker, confused, but he was now staring at him with eyes wide open, as if he was astonished and marveled.

“You can _see me_!” he repeated.

And then he disappeared.


	6. Presence

Castiel ran down the street and looked in both directions, but he didn’t see him walking away in either of them. He couldn’t have gone that far… could he?

He also couldn’t have disappeared right before his eyes. It didn’t make sense. He was convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him.

“Did you see which direction he went?” he asked the kids.

“Who?” Andy asked, still laughing. “Your imaginary friend?”

The other kid seemed a lot more concerned.

“Shut up, Andy! Look, we don’t want any trouble. We didn’t see anyone.”

“How could you not have seen him? He was standing right here!”

He didn’t mean to raise his voice, but he was outright starting to freak out now. And it must have shown, because Andy stopped laughing and both he and his friend stepped back.

“Alright, man. Whatever you say.”

And with that, they turned tail and briskly walked down the street. They kept throwing nervous glances in his direction every few steps, perhaps fearing that he would follow them. He was more than slightly tempted to. He wanted to grab them by the shoulders and ask them, again, if they hadn’t seen anyone and how was that even possible with how tall and imposing the guy was or if they were just a pair of dumb teenagers pulling his leg.

And how the hell had he got away so fast? None of that made sense.

He was still thinking about it when he got inside of his car. His hands trembled from the unreleased tension of screaming at the guy and then his sudden disappearance, so he had to focus on getting them correctly into the ignition. Next time, he promised himself. Next time he was going to ask Meg if she’d noticed the guy and if it was something they should be concerned about…

He met his eyes when he lifted his head to the review mirror. His heart almost jumped out of his chest.

“What the…?” Castiel screamed out and turned around.

The backseat was empty. But for a second, for a fraction of a second, he could have sworn he saw him, sitting there silently and…

Was he hallucinating? Was he seeing things? Maybe that kid was right and he was having a breakdown of some kind.

“Or maybe I’m just tired,” he said out lout.

For some reason, the sound of his own voice made him feel a little better. It was something concrete, familiar, to hold on to. He turned the ignition on and drove away from the library as fast as he could.

He also tried turning the radio on to feel like he had some company, but something must have been wrong with his antenna. There was just so much static coming out of the speakers he couldn’t make up a single word or a single note of music through it. The dial moved out of its volition too, causing a mess of white sound that he could barely stand, so he ended turning it off.

He was still a bit on edge when he got home. He never did this, but he locked the door behind him and checked that all the windows were closed as well. He was aware he wasn’t being the most rational person in the world. Like, what was the guy going to do, follow him on foot, get there before him and sneak in somehow?

He needed to take his mind off things. Dinner and a good movie would do that for him, undoubtedly.

He went to the kitchen, took out the frozen lasagna from the fridge and placed it in the microwave. He watched the seconds tick by while he did the breathing exercises that Dr. Kadinsky had taught him to get his anxiety under control. He was blowing things out of proportion. That had to be it. He must have wrong that the guy was always looking at Meg. Maybe he was just waiting for the next bus and Castiel had freaked him out like he’d freaked the teenagers. He needed to get a grip of himself.

He took his plate out of the microwave and turned around…

“Hello.”

The plate shattered on the ground and the hot lasagna spilled all over his trousers, but that was the least of Castiel’s problems.

The stalker was standing right in the middle of his kitchen. He hunched a little, like he was trying to make himself look smaller and had both hands up in a surrendering gesture.

“Please don’t be scared…”

It was too late for that. Castiel was already jumping backwards, his hands looking frantically for something on the counter that could be used as a defensive weapon, as his gaze never left the guy. Who knew what he could do if he lost sight of him again?

“Listen, I’m sorry, I don’t meant to frighten you,” the guy was saying now. His tone of voice was almost pleading. “But I need your help…”

Castiel’s fingers finally closed around _something_. A meat mace. Not as blunt as the baseball bat he kept under his bed and that he was thinking fondly about right now, but if he could get one good hit on the size of the guy’s head, he could knock him out and ran to the living room where his phone was to call 911…

“That’s not really going to help you,” the guy said.

“Are you threatening me?” Castiel said, puffing up his chest in an attempt to hide exactly how freaked he was.

The guy took a step back.

“No! I’m just… listen, this is going to sound crazy…”

Castiel didn’t care to listen to the rest of his explanation. He swung the mace, aiming straight at the guy’s head…

He expected to hear something solid hitting against him. A crack, a scream or pain. Anything that would indicate that he had hit his target.

Instead, the mace went right through him. The guy’s face became distorted as it passed across where his skull should have been, like a picture coming in and out of focus. Castiel stumbled a little, surprised by the force of his hit and by the fact he’d found no resistance at the other end. He stood immobile, blinking at the guy, who didn’t even seem bothered.

“Yeah, uh… there’s no easy way to put this,” he said, as if nothing had interrupted his earlier sentence. “But I’m…”

Castiel swung his “weapon” again, this time aiming for the shoulder. His mind was rationalizing everything as fast as it could. He must have seen wrong. The guy must have moved very fast. His eyes were playing tricks on him. There was no way the same thing was going to happen this time.

Except it did. The mace made contact with the guy’s body and found no resistance, sliding right past it once again. Castiel spun on his own heels and stepped back, leaning on the counter not to fall on the broken pieces of porcelain on the floor.

The guy seemed a little annoyed this time.

“Would you stop doing that? I’m trying to explain…”

“Who the hell are you?!” Castiel screamed at him, his panic rising to his throat with a jolt. “What the hell are you?!”

“I was getting there!” the guy replied., looking a bit too exasperated for someone who was trespassing on a house that wasn’t his. “My name is Sam. I’m Meg’s husband.”

That gave Castiel pause.

“Meg’s… _dead_ husband?”

“That’s a bit rude,” Sam said. “But, uh… yeah, essentially.”

Well, that made a lot more sense. Castiel left the mace on the counter again and walked towards Sam. A part of him still thought he was going to collapse against something (he looked so solid, so real), but he went through him just like the mace had. He shivered, a sudden chill going through his body, but overall, it seemed like this supposed “Sam” was not able to hurt him after all.

Not physically, at least.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked.

“Calling my psychiatrist,” Castiel replied. Why the hell did he do that? This… apparition, to call it something, obviously had to be a product of his mind.

“I’m real!” Sam insisted, but that was exactly what a hallucination would say.

“Yes, please, with Dr. Kadinsky. I know it’s late, but this is an emergency,” he said, when his secretary picked up.

“Hold, please, I’ll check if he has left.”

“Oh, come on,” Sam said. He sounded insanely frustrated and he rubbed his face for a bit. “First person who can see me and he thinks he’s gone insane.”

“That’s a very rude comment,” Castiel told him. “I’m not insane, I just have some mental illnesses…”

“Castiel?” Dr. Kadinsky said and Castiel was so glad to hear his voice.

“Yes, doctor, I think something might have gone wrong with my medication? I’m having some vivid hallucinations.”

“What kind?”

“I’m not a hallucination!” Sam insisted.

“It’s the dead husband of a woman I met at group therapy. She was talking about him earlier today…”

“Well, that might a sign of your extremely empathetic nature,” Dr. Kadinsky said. “But this is very worrying, Castiel. You’ve never experienced a sympEthan like this before.”

“I’m aware. How do I make it go away until I can get an appointment with you?”

“Well, you can try disrupting your thoughts by distracting yourself…”

The phone sputtered static at him, so loud that it drowned Dr. Kadinsky’s voice and Castiel had to move it away from his ear. The lights flickered above his head at the same time and the room suddenly went freezing cold.

“I’m not going away,” Sam said, stepping closer to be right up on Castiel’s face. “Because I’m real.”

Castiel wasn’t an easily scared person. He had been in situations where he feared for his life, but he had been an atheist since age fourteen and things like demons and ghosts were as real to him as the negative thoughts his brain tended to generate on its own. It had taken a great deal of pain and patience to get those under control.

But at that precise moment, with this man standing right in front of him, he was tempted to believe it. It was easier to believe he was a ghost than to admit that Castiel’s mind was playing tricks on him again, worse than ever before.

“No,” he said.

The last stopped flickering, but Sam didn’t disappear.

“Okay, let’s go about this logically,” he said, rubbing his temples as if Castiel could give him a headache. “What would it take for you to believe that I’m real?”

“Nothing,” Castiel said. He was mildly aware he was testing his luck, but damn if he was going to just accept that something supernatural was happening in his life when a simple explanation of his bran going haywire would do. “Because ghosts aren’t real!”

“Suppose that they are!” Sam insisted, raising his voice a little. He sounded like a teacher dealing with a very stubborn student so, if anything, he was a very lively hallucination. “What would it take you to confirm that I’m one?”

Dr. Kadinsky had told him to ignore him, to focus on anything else and Castiel sure didn’t know what he would win by entertaining him, but maybe if he did, he would shut up.

Yes, he realized he was doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing, but at that point, all he wanted was to cook a new portion of lasagna and go to bed. Maybe the “ghost” wouldn’t be there when he woke up in the morning.

“A third party confirmation?” Castiel offered. “Someone else seeing you?”

“Yeah, that’s not really going to work.” The ghost looked very tired all of the sudden. “I’ve trying to get people to notice me for the past three years. And by people I mean Meg, my brother, my mother… none of them could see me.”

That was another thing that didn’t make sense and why Castiel was willing to believe Dr. Kadinsky’s explanation that he was just empathized with Meg so hard his brain broke. If he was dead, he would also appeared to people who cared about him, not a random complete stranger.

“I don’t even know if you’re telling the truth,” Castiel pointed out. “All I know about you… about the _real_ Sam is what Meg has told us in the group sessions.”

Sam snapped his fingers, his hazel eyes opening wide as he did.

“Photos! You can find pictures of me to confirm I’m really who I say I am. You have no way of knowing how I looked, so if I do the same as in the pictures, you’ll know, right?”

“That seems… extremely logical,” Castiel said, frowning. “Why would a hallucination want me to confirm I’m hallucinating?”

“Because I’m… just do it, will you?”

Castiel stared at him for several seconds and suddenly it dawned on him why this was happening.

“You’re giving me permission to cyber-stalk Meg.”

“I… no, I just want you to…”

“I’m giving _myself_ permission to cyber-stalk Meg because I have a crush on her but I know it’s inappropriate to approach her like that when she’s still mourning her husband,” Castiel continued. “You’re a manifestation of my own guilt and my need for absolution.”

“That is not… dude, you have a crush on my wife?”

“You’re dead. And also not real.”

Sam scoffed. Castiel had to congratulate his own imagination. It did make Sam’s expression very easy to read. Right now, he looked deeply offended, but he took a deep breath. He looked like he was trying with all his might to keep his cool and Castiel wondered if it was his own emotions reflecting back at him because he, too, was having trouble keeping himself together.

“Well… are you going to do it?” Sam asked.

“No.”

Castiel turned heel to look for a broom and a mop to clean up the mess he had made in the kitchen.

“Oh, come on!” Sam screamed, but Dr. Kadinsky said to focus on something else and that was exactly what Castiel was going to do. He’d indulged in this hallucination long enough.

It was easier said than done, though. Castiel went about his night as normally as he could, with a random dead dude speaking to him nonstop.

“Don’t ignore me!” Sam pleaded as Castiel poured water on a pot to make himself a package of ramen. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to go three years with no one listening to you or even seeing you?”

Castiel sat on his dinner table and started eating the ramen.

“It’s literally torture! And I cannot believe you’re eating that, do you have any idea how much sodium those flavor packets carry?”

Oh, so this “ghost” was also a health nut. Lucky him.

Castiel finished his dinner, washed his plate and went upstairs.

“You don’t even have to look at Meg’s profile! You can look at my Facbook page. It’s been memorialized and whatnot, so you wouldn’t really be infringing on anyone’s privacy.”

Castiel was tempted to say that was just a getaway excuse to actually cyber-stalk Meg, but instead, he got into the bathroom and took a long shower.

For some strange reason that seemed to work. Maybe Castiel’s hallucination was too polite to follow him straight into the bathroom? That was strange, but everything about the situation was strange, so he was ready to take that as a win.

He put on his pajamas and swan-dived into his bed.

He was just about to fall asleep when Sam walked in. He just passed straight through Castiel’s closed door like it wasn’t even there.

“Okay, I didn’t want to have to do this,” he announced.

“Do what?” Castiel asked, mildly apprehensive. He immediately chastised himself for giving into the hallucination again, because now he would just not… _leave_.

Sam sat at the edge of his bed. There was no sinking in the mattress to indicate he was really there, which made for a very surreal experience.

“I’m gonna have to annoy you until you do it.”

“Oh, my God,” Castiel grumbled. He grabbed his pillow and placed it over his head to turn around.

It made no difference. Sam spent the hours relentlessly trying to bore him to death with tales of his old clients and cases. Castiel wasn’t sure Meg had ever mentioned Sam was a lawyer, but she must have, because otherwise, how else would he know?

“So there was this one time that this couple split, right? And the wife came to our firm and she was distraught and crying. It took her like fifteen minutes to stop and then I asked her what was wrong and she said ‘My ex-husband won’t let me see our son’. And I was about to ask a bunch of questions, like who had primary custody and how old the son was, but then pulls up this picture… I’m not even kidding; it was an actual framed that she just carried around in her purse. And the son was actually a bird. Like, one of those cockatoos with the big feathers in the head, but it had some feathers missing and apparently couldn’t fly because it was a rescue…”

Castiel kept tossing and turning, placing the pillow over his head and trying to focus his mind in literally anything else, but nothing could drown out Sam’s voice.

“… so yeah, we actually ended drafting a visitation regime for the cockatoo.” He laughed and made a pause. Castiel closed his eyes, letting his own tiredness wash over him. Maybe he would fall asleep now and. “Oh, and this other time…”

“That’s enough!” Castiel screamed. He kicked the covers aside and stood up.

“Are you going to do it?” Sam asked, his eyes widening in excitement. “Are you going to check the pictures?”

It was probably not the soundest idea, but he was desperate and tired and just wanted him to shut the hell up already. He went downstairs barefoot and turned on his computer.

Only when the browser was open right in front of him he realized he didn’t know Meg’s last name.

“Sam Winchester,” the ghost provided happily. “Search for Sam Winchester.”

Castiel stared at him. How would he know that…?

No. He didn’t know that. That was the point. It must have been a name that he’d picked up somewhere subconsciously and conflated it with Meg’s Sam. He was now going to see that there were two dozen Sam Winchesters in Facebook, that none of them looked like this Sam and that he truly was hallucinating.

He typed out the name.

The first page that came up was his.

There was no mistaking him: he was the same tall guy, with the same pointed chin and dimples in his smile, the same long brown hair and even a similar plaid shirt. Most tellingly, in his profile picture, Meg was there two. She had her arms around him and was smiling up him, while Sam kept his arms around her waist, pulling her closer to him.

They looked happy.

“Do you believe me now?” Sam asked, startling him once again.

“No.” Castiel shook his head. “No, this can’t be happening.”

“Well, it is. And I don’t mean to be… you realize it’s four thirty in the morning, right?” Sam added when he saw Castiel grabbing a phone. “Who are you calling?”

“A friend of mine,” Castiel replied, not sure why he felt compelled to give him an explanation. But he did have one friend in the entire world that be up at that hour.

“Hello?”

Balthazar’s voice sounded rough and sleepy and Castiel cringed.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, Cas, don’t worry,” he said in his soft British accent. “I was just… entertaining a guest.”

Which meant that he was in bed with someone he’d picked up earlier at a party or a bar. Well, it was Friday night… or more like Saturday morning. This shouldn’t have really surprised Castiel at all.

“Listen, I need to ask you a very weird favor,” Castiel said. “But I feel like I’m losing my mind and I need a pair of objective eyes.”

“Of course, darling, anything you need.”

“Do you have your computer or your tablet nearby?”

Balthazar did ask for explanations while he was turning his device on and Castiel evaded them, because what was he going to say? “I’m seeing ghosts all of the sudden”.

“Who is this Sam Winchester again?”

“He’s a… a friend of a friend.”

“Subtle,” Sam said. He was now sitting on the armrest of Castiel’s couch, his long legs extended far into the carpet. For someone incorporeal, he really seemed to take up a lot of space.

“Sam Winchester, let’s see… oh, dear. It looks like he’s… passed, I’m afraid.”

“How?”

“It says here there was a car accident… did you know him?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Castiel said, eyeing Sam. A car accident coincided with Meg’s story, but still, a lot of people died in car accidents every day.

“Well, I’m sorry. Looks like he was very well-liked, if the comments on his page are anything to go by.”

Castiel had noticed that two. At least two dozen people had left condolences and heartfelt messages on Sam’s memorialized wall. His anniversary had been a few months ago, in July, and there had been enough people in his life who remembered it. It was quite touching, he had to admit.

“Are you seeing the picture of him?”

“Yes. What does that…?”

“Describe him.”

“What?” Balthazar asked, which Castiel felt he wasn’t fair. He never asked any questions when Balthazar requested strange favors of him at whatever hour of the morning.

“Describe him. Tell me what he looks like,” Castiel insisted.

“O… okay, well… he’s either very tall or the woman who’s hugging him is very short,” Balthazar started. “Long brown hair, hazel eyes… handsome as hell. My, it’s such a shame he’s dead.”

“He was married,” Castiel clarified.

“Double shame, them.”

Castiel bit the inside of his cheek and sat back down on his chair, with his eyes facing the ghost. He was intently looking at him.

“Do you believe me now?”

“Cas, can I ask what’s going on?” Balthazar asked.

“I don’t think you’d believe it even if I explain it to you,” Castiel replied, with a sigh. “It’s… it’s complicated.”

“Give me the simplified version, then.”

The simplified version, the most straightforward one, was that Castiel was really seeing the ghost of a complete stranger for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom. But he wasn’t yet ready to accept that, so he was tempted for a second to ask Balthazar to come and get him to check himself up on a mental ward for a couple of days.

Except he feared that if he did that, Sam would follow him and if he had to hear one more time about visitation hours for pets…

“The simple version is that I’m very tired and thinking things I shouldn’t,” he said instead. “I’m sorry I woke you up. Go back to your guest.”

“Cas,” Balthazar called him before he could end the call. “I’m sorry if this question might sound insensitive but are you feeling well?”

Castiel hated that tone of voice in the usually carefree, happy Balthazar, because he only used it when he thought Castiel was about to do something very, very stupid. Again.

“I’m fine,” he promised.

“Right, you would say that. But you would also tell my if that wasn’t the case, right? With the time of the year that it is and all…”

Castiel pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I have an appointment with Dr. Kadinsky this week,” he said, even though he hadn’t set up the appointment before the call dropped… or the ghost interrupted it, he couldn’t really be sure anymore.

“Well… that’s good, Cas. That’s very good.”

“Yes. Thank you, Balt. I’m sorry again for waking you up.”

He ended the call because he wasn’t sure he could handle more of Balthazar’s sincere concern for him. He wasn’t sure he could handle a lot of things, like the revelation that there was indeed such thing as an afterlife and that even if he could tell someone… well, with his history, it was unlikely that anyone was going to believe him.

“So…?” Sam asked.

Castiel stared at him. He had a thousand more questions, but the most pressing one was definitely:

“Are you going to let me sleep now?”

Luckily for him, the ghost turned out to be very polite when he got what he wanted.

“Right, yes, I’m sorry. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“Really? Now you’re going to get off my case?”

“You believe me now.” Sam shrugged. “And I’m still going to be dead in the morning.”

A polite smartass and a health nut. Why did Meg ever marry this guy?

“Look, I’ve waited three years for the chance to speak to someone,” Sam said. “ _Really_ speak to them. I can wait a little longer.”

Castiel was going to point he had not been willing to wait for him to believe that he wasn’t hallucinating, but he was too sleep-deprived at that point to argue. He walked past the ghost and this time, he didn’t follow. He dived into his bed and fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes.


	7. Remembrance

On Saturday, Castiel woke up to find out he’d forgotten to charge his phone the night before. It was almost noon at this point, too late to go to his morning run, so he simply went back downstairs to pour himself some coffee.

It wasn’t until he took the first sip of it that the events from the night before started to catch up in his mind.

He looked around, almost expecting Sam to jump out at him from around a corner. But the “ghost” was nowhere to be found. There was no trace of him and Castiel almost let himself believed that it had been a hallucination after all. If it wasn’t for the pieces of the broken plate in the kitchen’s trash can, he would have almost thought that it had been a particularly vivid dream.

Why would he be dreaming about Meg’s husband that he’d never seen before, well, that was for his psychiatrist to figure out.

He spent Saturday actively not thinking about it, finishing some pieces of furniture in his garage that he’d been postponing for some time. He enjoyed the physical aspect of it, the fact that he had to throw his whole body and mind into it to get it just right. He also loved the artistry that went into it.

He’d started doing carpentry as a hobby back in high school and then he’d picked up again during what he thought was surely going to be the most miserable stage of his life: he’d dropped out of pre-Med, he was trying to hold down two menial jobs and Jack was two years old and kept asking about “momma”. Carpentry was what he did when he was trying not go insane. He uploaded pictures of his pieces to his social media, mainly as a way to let his family and friends know that he and Jack were still alive.

Balthazar had contacted him with an offer soon after. He was looking to open what he described as “a modern furniture shop” and wondered if Castiel was interested in working for them. He’d thought it had to be some sort of scam at first, but Balthazar turned out to not only be a legitimate business partner, but also a friend in times of extreme need.

“If you’re ever too overwhelmed, you can leave the little bugger with me,” he’d told Castiel around the time Jack was tree or maybe four and already recognized him as “Uncle Balt”. “I’m sure we’ll find someone fun to do.”

“Oh, I couldn’t…”

“Castiel, darling, listen. You need to go out more. I’ve noticed the glances you’ve been exchanging with Norah. I think it’ll be good for you to go out and have some fun for a change.”

Norah was a cashier at the store and also a single mom, so she understood many of Castiel’s plights, but it ended up not working out. They both needed to put their children first and couldn’t dedicate enough time to an actual relationship.

Then Daphne and him ended up not working out. She was a very nice woman, but also extremely religious. Castiel had lost his faith somewhere around his teenage years and he didn’t want to impose any of that on Jack when he was still too young to really understand spirituality or the lack thereof.

Then April and him ended up not just not working out, but blowing up spectacularly. In front of him, she was as sweet as she could be, but he’d started noticing how Jack always got nervous and quiet around her. When he finally interrogated him about it, Jack confessed crying that April would say mean things to him, like how when she married Castiel and they had a “real son”, she would send him away to military school.

“That’s insane, that never happened! He’s a lying brat who never liked me!” April argued when he brought this concerns to her. “Are you going to believe him or me?”

“Him, every time.”

She did not take the break-up well and it had taken Castiel changing his phone number twice, blocking her on all of his social media and a threat to get a restraining order for her to understand it was really over. He still considered that relationship his biggest lapse in judgement.

“Here’s to being a free man again!” Balthazar had said when they got together to have a beer afterwards. “And for better things to come!”

Better things had not come, sadly. Jack’s health started getting worse when he was around thirteen. He was always a delicate child, prone to catching colds and other sicknesses far easier than any of his classmates. He had anemia growing up and had to follow a special diet and take supplements. It wasn’t until he was thirteen and outright passed out in class that they discovered something was really wrong with his immune system.

“Why didn’t you tell your teacher that you weren’t feeling well?” Castiel asked him later on in the hospital.

“I didn’t want to bother anybody.”

That was Jack. He never wanted to bother anybody. He was going to be tall, if he’d been allowed to reach his full height, but he was lanky, with long legs and arms that he seemed not to know what to do with. A tuft of light brown hair on his head, like his mother’s, piercing blue eyes like the Miltons. Like his dad’s.

Like Castiel’s.

Jack slumped his shoulders and never raised his voice. The teachers always said he was a very smart student and “a pleasure to have in class”, but that he needed to come out of his shell more. However, he seemed happy to have just a handful of friends and spend the rest of his time with Castiel. He got fatigued easily because of his condition so he couldn’t help with the carpentry, but he would sit down in the garage while Castiel worked with a book about whatever interested him that week and every now and then reading out loud some interesting fact over the buzzing of the saw.

“Did you know that sloths can die of starvation on a full stomach?” he’d said, for example. “Their metabolism is so slow that even if they eat they will take too long to process it. That’s why they’re always munching on leaves.”

“Sounds like your Uncle Gabriel with candy.”

Jack had found that comment hilarious.

He was always laughing or smiling, even when he was in pain, even when the treatments left him exhausted. It wasn’t just Castiel who’d lost him. The world itself seemed a little darker without his nephew on it.

Balthazar hadn’t even dropped him when Castiel fell into a very deep depression after Jack’s death. He could have, he should have, even. It would have been better for the business without Castiel’s dark cloud dragging it down, but he wouldn’t even hear about it.

“We’re just going to be waiting for you until you to recover,” Balthazar had told him. “And you will recover, Castiel, do you understand me?”

He could make support sound like an outright threat if he wanted to.

It had taken a while. Castiel felt aimless without Jack, desperate. For sixteen years, his goal, everything he did, had been to take care of him. Even when he went to college, he imagined, Jack would still call him up when he needed help or come over the weekends. Losing him entirely… well, he understood it when Meg had sent that she had no cause in life without Sam. He’d felt the exact same way without Jack.

He stopped varnishing when he heard the roar of an engine pulling up in his driveway. He was not surprised to see Balthazar’s red Mercedes and he was even less surprised to see his best friend come out of it wearing his classic V-neck shirt and a black jacket on top of it. It was still summer, technically, so Balthazar would not change his outfit for something more winter-y until January, most likely.

He was also not surprised to see he was carrying a pack of his favorite artisanal beer. Balthazar was too refined to just drink the cheap stuff.

“You didn’t have to come all the way over here to see me,” Castiel told him.

“Well, I wouldn’t have if you’d bothered to pick up the phone!”

Castiel grimaced and remembered that he’d left it inside. He was about to apologize, but Balthazar simply pulled him for a quick hug and told him (ordered him) to take a break.

They sat down on the porch as the evening fell around them. The only sound on the street were the distant sprinklers activating every few minutes and some crickets singing as the last ray of suns stretched the shadows of their trees.

“You really had me worried there for a while.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.” Castiel grimaced. “It was… a weird day and night.”

“So who’s this Sam Winchester person?” Balthazar asked, because he was never one to beat around the bush.

Castiel took a long swig of his beer, to give himself time to think up an excuse. Of course, he wasn’t going to mention the ghost at all.

“He’s the dead husband of a woman I met recently.”

“A woman?” Balthazar’s eyes shimmered.

“I met her at the grief support group.”

“She wouldn’t happen to be that lovely brunette thing I saw in the pictures?”

Castiel huffed, not sure how to answer to that. On one hand, he didn’t want to reveal exactly what he felt for Meg. It had been hard enough to admit it to himself. On the other, Balthazar knew him well enough that refusing to say anything was only delaying the inevitable.

“She seems… very lonely,” he said, just because the silence was going on for too long.

“And you’re lonely too and thought you could keep each other company?” Balthazar’s grin was full of suggestions.

“It’s not like that. I want to be her friend, but she’s going through a lot. I understand it. Those first few years, I didn’t really allow myself to grieve, to feel because I feared it would be too much.”

“And when you finally did… well, we both know how that went,” Balthazar said, tapping a finger over Castiel’s chest. “She is going to need someone when it all comes flooding in.”

Castiel agreed, but there were many things wrong with those presumptions still.

“She could still be getting support from her family and friends. I might like look like an intruder or a stalker in her life. I don’t want to do anything that would make her feel uncomfortable.”

Balthazar narrowed his eyes at him.

“What?” Castiel asked, uncomfortable.

“Oh, nothing. I’m just trying to figure out whether this is your usual Castiel niceness or if you’re head over heels for this woman.”

“It’s not like that,” Castiel said, but deep down, he knew he was lying.

He couldn’t get Meg off his head sometimes. Well, Meg, and apparently her dead husband too. Though he still hadn’t shown up to haunt him some more, so he counted that as a win.

“Anyway, Cas… you know I’m looking out for you,” Balthazar said, as he opened another beer. “You can tell me anything you need.”

“Yes. Thank you,” Castiel said, accepting the beer from him. They toasted to the late summer night.

* * *

The ghost didn’t return until the following Thursday. Castiel was in the middle of preparing the dough for the pizzas when, once again, Sam Winchester materialized in his kitchen.

“Hello!”

Castiel managed to keep a hold on his tray this time, but it was a close call.

“Would you stop doing that?!” he screamed out.

It took him a second to realize that his reaction was not what people would consider entirely sane. He might have been hallucinating again or he might have the soul of an actual dead man standing in his kitchen, and all he could think about was about how his pizza dough almost got ruined.

“Sorry,” Sam replied, and he did look mortified for a second. “Talking to you took a lot more energy out of me that I thought.”

“You got tired?” Castiel asked, placing the dough on the counter to start rolling it. “You’re dead.”

“It’s hard to explain. I have to really focus to be anywhere and well, most of the time I’m with Meg. I want to make sure she’s doing okay.”

That, despite it all, managed to catch Castiel’s attention.

“Is she?”

“No. She’s severely depressed, isolated and a shadow of her former self.” Sam shook his head at Castiel, as if he thought that his question was stupidly obvious. “She needs help.”

“I thought that was the point of her going to the support group.”

“I thought it would help too, but it might not be enough.”

Castiel placed the pizzas inside of the oven and checked on the sauce. He stirred it up with a wooden spoon and tasted it. It needed some more spices…

“Are you listening to me?”

“Sadly,” Castiel replied. He didn’t know if it was dangerous or not to sass a ghost, but at that point, he wasn’t interested in being polite to a fucking apparition. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it. I’m not a therapist or a psychiatrist. I’m just a guy in a support group.”

“But you said you cared about her!” Sam protested.

Castiel opened the fridge and started cutting up the mozzarella. That wasn’t exactly what he’d said but he wasn’t going to remind Sam exactly what he had said. It had been embarrassing enough to admit it out loud once.

“I barely know her. I do care that she gets to a healthier point in her life,” Castiel said, trying to avoid looking directly at Sam. “But I don’t think there’s anything I can do more than just offering her my friendship…”

Sam was suddenly standing right in front of him. It was freaky to see him, with his body half sunken in the kitchen counter. Castiel thought, pathetically, if his presence would somehow affect the ingredients he was going through.

“You have to do more,” Sam said. He didn’t sound threatening or angry this time, incredibly. “You have to be able to do more. Why else would you be able to see me?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel said and the truth is, he had been avoiding that question this far. If Sam was really a ghost… why the hell would he come to him? He had no relationship with Meg or Sam prior to her coming to the support group. He didn’t even really believe in the supernatural.

So this was very strange any way one looked at it.

“It has to be because you can help me,” Sam insisted. “Help _us_.”

“I’m not sure what you mean…”

“I mean I’m stuck here because I can’t leave until I make sure Meg is okay!”

The ding of the oven clock punctuated his words in a way that would have been comical if what he’d just said hadn’t been so tragically sad.

Castiel turned around and took the pizzas out of the oven. He started pouring the sauce over them, spreading it as evenly as he could.

“Did you…?”

“Yes, I heard you!” Castiel exclaimed. “I’m thinking. All of this is very surreal for me, you know?”

“Imagine how I feel,” Sam said.

His sarcasm was very cutting. Castiel could easily imagine him getting along with Meg.

But he was kind enough to stay quiet while Castiel added the cheese and placed the pizzas back in the oven to get it to melt.

“Can I ask you what that is like?”

“What thing?”

“Being dead,” Castiel clarified. “I always thought that you just… stopped existing after it. I never wondered if we had a soul or… where it went.”

Sam blinked at him, as if the question had caught him by surprise.

“Your nephew. You’re asking because of him.”

“How do you know about that?” Castiel frowned at him. He couldn’t remember Sam ever stalking around the bookshelves and listening on the sessions. A ghost with a sense of privacy, how about that?

“Meg told me about it. She talks a lot about you.”

“She does?”

The ghost immediately seemed obfuscated. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Well, she talks about all the other members of the support group too.”

“Right.” Castiel turned his back on him, but of course Sam appeared next to the fridge as he was picking up the topping’s plastic containers and almost gave him a heart attack for the fifth time. “Stop!”

Sam ignored him.

“Speaking of, shouldn’t you be getting ready for the session?”

“I’m not going tonight,” Castiel clarified. “Jack’s friends are coming over. His anniversary was yesterday.”

He didn’t want his voice to break as he was saying it. He didn’t want it to seem like this was a sad, solemn occasion. The kids (who were all in their mid-twenties now, but whom he couldn’t stop thinking about as “the kids”) never acted like it was and he was more than willing to follow their example.

“Oh, I see.” Sam raised his eyebrows. “So… this is a social occasion where you’re hoping everything goes right.”

“Isn’t that all social occasions?” Castiel asked as he started putting the toppings on different plates so the kids could choose for themselves.

“Bet it would be really weird if say, things just started falling off places and shattering,” Sam said. “Or if the lights went out…”

Castiel squinted at him.

“You wouldn’t.”

Sam stretched his hand to one of the plates laid out on the counter and slowly started pushing it towards the edge…

“Stop!” Castiel said. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re literally the only person who could help me and you refuse to do it!”

“Okay, fine!” Castiel replied, because at that point, he was willing to say or do anything to get him to stop tormenting him. “Fine, I’ll… I’ll try to help you. Just leave us alone tonight.”

Sam moved his hand away from the plate.

“Very well. We’ll talk about this after your little get together,” he said. “But we will talk about this.”

He didn’t disappear this time. He turned around and marched towards the stairs. Walking. Like a normal person.

“What are you doing?” Castiel asked him.

“Well, I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to get back here if I leave,” Sam explained. “So I’m just gonna head upstairs and wait for you there.”

Like a ghostly roommate who wanted to stay out of the way while Castiel had people over. As if the situation wasn’t weird enough.

The first ones to arrive were, as always, Alexis and Patience.

“Hello, Uncle Cas!” Alexis greeted him and gave him a quick hug. “We’re sorry we’re late!”

They were only five minutes late, but Alexis was always a stickler for punctuality.

“Not at all. I’m glad you could take the night off.”

Alexis was studying to become a doctor. She had recently started her residency, as she had shared excitedly on Facebook. He ran her straight black hair back and walked inside.

“We brought some snacks, we hope that’s okay…” she said as she headed for the kitchen.

“Hello, Patience,” Castiel said, turning to the other girl.

Patience was frozen in the doorway, her dark eyes opened wide. She looked around, like she was expecting to see something completely out of place and shivered.

“Patience?”

She snapped out of it with a deep breath.

“Hello… hi,” she mumbled. She smiled, but there was something forced about it. “How are you?”

Castiel was going to ask her what was wrong, when another car pulled up in the driveway. Kaia, Ethan, Eliot and Claire all came out of it jumping and noisy as always, with soda cans and supermarket bags that Castiel deduced had very unhealthy snacks in them.

“Ah, dammit, she beat us again!” Claire complained. She swung an arm around Patience, who startled, but then laughed. “Long time no see, nerd!”

“Right, back at you, juvenile delinquent,” Patience said, rolling her eyes at her.

“Hi, Cas.”

“Hello, kids,” Castiel said, smiling. Despite everything else that had gone on that week, he felt his heart swell with something akin to pride when he saw them all together like that. “Come on in.”

They settled in the living room with ease, exchanging old jokes and screaming and each other, filling up the house with their laughter and voices. Castiel brought up the pizzas he’d spent cooking all afternoon and settled them on the carpet.

The first year, he’d tried to have this party in his dining room, where they would all sit around the table and have an actual dinner. It had been awkward and the conversation had been stilted. Castiel had the disheartening impression that the kids had not had a good time at all. Alexis had messaged him through social media and confirmed that impression. However, she’d promised him he would try to convince everyone to show up again the following year. She mostly succeeded. Stacey and Max had decided not to come again, but the rest had promised they would.

The pizza party in the living room, where they could sit around the couches or the floor in their socks and just talk, in a more relaxed ambiance, had been the solution. The atmosphere had been a lot more relaxed, and this time, he didn’t have to recruit anyone’s help when he asked them to come back.

“Yay, pizza!” Kaia said, and practically jumped on the plates that Castiel put on the table.

“Babe, leave something for me!” Claire complained.

“So what have you guys been up to?” Castiel asked, placing the toppings so they could choose what to put on them.

“Oh, I just got a new job,” Eliot said.

“Are you enjoying that?”

“No, it’s hell,” he said, with a smile on his face.

It must have been one of those generational jokes that Castiel wasn’t getting, because they all laughed. There wasn’t anything mean-spirited about it. They all just started complaining about their jobs and internships, like the previous years they had complained about finals and essays and student loans. They were all brilliant kids with brilliant futures ahead of them and Castiel was glad they felt they could talk openly about everything going on with them.

“Anyone want a beer?”

“Not me, I have to drive,” Alexis said.

“I’ll have one!” Eliot said.

“Me too,” Patience replied.

Everyone stared at her, a little surprised. Castiel remembered her from her high school days as a very shy, almost anxious girl, but a great student that had come to help Jack many times with his homework. She apparently had continued to be rather introverted and reserved during her college years, because while the others talked about parties and concerts they had gone, Patience talked about her exams and the internships she was applying to.

“Alright, nerd!” Claire said, opening the beer for her before handing it to her. “You’re finally starting to loosen up!”

Patience just gave her an awkward laugh and took a long swig of her beer.

The toppings were disappearing at an alarming rate. Claire, Ethan and Eliot started a fight for the last piece of beef to add to them, so they didn’t notice when Alexis and Kaia quietly stole it and split it between the two.

“That’s not fair!” Claire protested when she saw it.

“Well, you should have been quicker to move!”

The pineapples were the only toppings that had gone untouched. Castiel grabbed a piece of it, placed it on one of the pizzas and moved to leave in front of Jack’s picture on the shelf.

All the laughter and talk died down as he did this. He had planned on doing it quietly, but they had all noticed and now they were looking at him quizzically.

“He always liked pineapple on pizza,” Castiel commented, apologetically.

“Yeah. Dude was a bit of a weirdo,” Eliot said, running his fingers through his short sandy hair.

“But good!” Alexis said, throwing a warning glance at him.

“Yeah, the good kind of weirdo,” Ethan said. Kaia hit him in the arm, because obviously that was not what Alexis had said. “I mean it as a compliment! Like, remember Todd?”

“Oh, God, yeah.” Claire rolled her eyes. “He was such a bully.”

“You always wanted to fight him,” Kaia laughed.

“Well, it didn’t matter what he told Jack, he always either pretended it was a compliment or like he hadn’t understood what Todd meant,” Ethan explained. “Like, he was always insulting him, picking on him…”

“Jack never mentioned anyone picking on him,” Castiel said, frowning.

“That’s what I’m trying to say. Todd couldn’t bully him, because everything he said, just… rolled off Jack’s back,” Ethan explained.

“He was so laid back,” Eliot agreed.

“He wasn’t.”

They all turned to Kaia, who had a sudden sad look upon her face.

“What do you mean?”

“I found him crying on an empty classroom once,” Kaia told them. “Todd had said some really mean things about Jack’s parents.”

Everyone cringed and some threw glances at Castiel, like they were waiting for his reaction. Castiel didn’t know how to really react to that information. He didn’t know how much Jack had shared with them about Kelly and Luc, but even so, a dedicated teenager with an internet connection could have discovered some nasty things about them anyway,

“It’s the first time I’m hearing about this Todd kid,” he said.

“I told Jack to report him, but he wouldn’t,” Kaia explained. “He said he didn’t want to make things harder than they needed to be. I didn’t know what he meant. Now I think… he was just trying to have a good senior year at school, to get along with everyone, because, well…”

He didn’t want to take any rancor to his grave. Those had been his exact words when he’d asked Castiel to take him to visit Luc in jail.

He wasn’t going to tell them that, of course.

“Fucking Todd,” Eliot said. “I hope he felt sorry when…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, and he didn’t have to.

“He wouldn’t. He was a sociopath,” Claire said.

“It’s not fair,” Alexis said, with a sigh. “That Jack is gone and that Todd is gonna grow up to be some… asshole who inherited his dad’s business and continue bullying on his employees.”

“With a beer belly and a premature balding spot,” Ethan wished.

“Perhaps,” Castiel interrupted them. “Many things aren’t fair in the world and if you were to ask me, I would tell you that losing Jack was a great unfairness, to me and to you. But I am grateful, for the time I had with him. And I am grateful that you’re still here, growing up and having wonderful lives, doing beautiful things, helping the people he couldn’t. He would be proud of all of you. I know I am.”

A short silence followed that declaration. Castiel started feeling a bit uncomfortable with all the eyes on him, but then Alexis said:

“Aw!”

And Claire lightly punched him in the bicep.

“To Jack!” Eliot said, raising his can.

“To Jack!” they all repeated, and toasted to his memory.


	8. Mission

They insisted on cleaning up and washing the dishes before they left and Castiel was thankful. He didn’t know why, but all of this had drained him of energy.

“So yeah, workshop’s going great,” Claire told him while they rinsed and washed the dishes. “Kaia started working there too after I recommended her; she paints the bikes and the clients love her designs because they’re literally so perfect.”

Of course, Claire would think anything her girlfriend did was perfect.

“I’m glad you’re not still thinking about racing,” Castiel said.

“What’s wrong with racing?” Claire complained.

Alexis sneaked up behind her and put her arms around her waist.

“Our mom would kill you!”

“Get off me!”

Castiel laughed. Claire and Alexis had been like sisters to Jack growing up. They were both foster kids adopted by a very good woman and they were both outcasts at school, so of course Jack had befriended them. Claire had later confessed to Castiel that he’d initially approached him because she thought Castiel looked a lot like his biological father and wanted to know if they had some sort of relation.

They didn’t, but it was funny how things turn out.

“It was good to see you, girls,” Castiel said, bidding them goodbye at the door. “Send my regards to Jody when you talk to her.”

“Will do.”

“You go,” Patience told Alexis when she stepped outside. “I have something I want to discuss with Cas.”

That was… unusual to say the least. If Patience needed to tell him something, she had both his number and his Facebook page; she could easily send him a message in either of them. But when she turned to him, her face was so serious Castiel didn’t even dare to ask what was wrong.

“Listen, I know this might sound crazy and you’re not exactly a believer,” she started, “but I think you might have a ghost in your house.”

Castiel blinked at her. Would she think he was crazy if he agreed with her…?

“It’s not Jack,” she added, immediately. “I think I would know if it was Jack. But… there’s definitely an energy here. Have you noticed anything weird? Like, objects moving on their own, scratches, random cold spots?”

“Hey, is the party over?” Sam asked, peaking his head down the stairs.

“I might have noticed some things, yes,” Castiel said. “Do you know about this… sort of stuff?”

“What sort of stuff?” Sam asked, walking into the living room now.

“God, no. I mean… I have a bit of a gift, but I stay away from all of it. It freaks me out,” Patience said. “Still, it’s like hearing. You can ignore some sounds, but you can’t turn it off entirely, right?”

“She’s psychic?” Sam asked, raising his eyebrows at Patience.

“My grandma’s psychic,” Patience said. She looked over her shoulder, apprehensively, and Castiel was surprised to see she was doing towards the spot in which Sam was standing. But she didn’t see him, because she didn’t ask who was the strange guy standing on his living room. Or at least she was very good at not reacting to it. “She understands all of this a lot better. I’ll give you her number. She doesn’t normally do house calls, but she will make an exception for you.”

“Patience, you don’t really have to…”

Patience had already taken her phone out of her pocket, tapping quickly on the screen. Castiel’s phone chimed immediately after.

“Listen, I don’t need to know what you did to attract this,” she said. “I’m not judging you, okay? I tried talking to my mom after she passed too. You gotta be careful, though, you don’t know what kind of things you can call on sometimes.”

“You think I attracted this?” Castiel asked, a bit confused. “That I did something to bring it here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was here before you moved in and woke it up? Doesn’t matter.” Patience shook her head. “Call my grandma, she’ll help you. Good luck.”

And with that, she was out the door too. Castiel closed it behind her.

“Smart kid,” Sam commented.

“She is.”

“Full of shit, though.”

Castiel stared at him, astounded by his bluntness.

“I would really appreciate it if you didn’t talk about her like that,” he said, trying to imprint a serious tone in his voice, even though… what could he possibly threaten to do? Sam was already dead and he had proven himself very hard to just ignore.

“Sorry, I’m just saying. I’ve gone to a lot of psychics to try and send a message to Meg through them,” Sam explained. “Not one of them could see me or hear me.”

“You couldn’t have done that whole trick with the lights and the throwing objects around?”

“Yeah, the problem is, I can’t really do much more than that and people tend to dismiss those things,” Sam said. He sat down to perch again on the couch’s armrest. “And even doing as little as that drains me to the point I can feel myself disappearing. It takes me a while to pull myself together again.”

He talked about it as it was all very logical and obvious, but it wasn’t so much to Castiel.

“What do you mean, disappear? Where do you go?”

That question seemed to have caught Sam off-guard.

“Nowhere?” he said after a moment of reflexion.

“You have to go somewhere.”

“Maybe I do, but…” Sam took a second to breathe in. Castiel figured it was just an automatic action, because he really didn’t need to breathe, did he? “It’s like… have you ever passed out?”

“Not exactly, but I can imagine.”

“It’s a bit like that. I lose consciousness of where I am or what time it is,” Sam said. “If I get distracted I start losing focus too. And then, after a while, I sort of appear again. I can come and go, like I can come here or follow Meg around but if I disappear, I always appear in our house again. It’s like I’m tethered to that place.”

“Well, yes, obviously… do you think Meg did something?” Castiel asked. “To like… invoke you or prevent you from moving forwards…”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “I don’t remember dying, per se. I remember the truck’s lights and being in the car as it flipped… and then I woke up and I was home. I thought it was a dream. Then Meg came back in her wheelchair and she wasn’t talking to me. She couldn’t hear me or see me, and I thought _that_ was part of the dream. It took me a while to realize what was happening.”

He spoke about it so nonchalantly, like he’d gone through a process to arrive to the conclusion that he was dead.

“Weren’t you scared?”

“I was terrified out of my mind, yes,” Sam said. “But I’ve had time to adjust.”

He shrugged. The more Castiel stared at him, the more… human he seemed. If he hadn’t known that throwing something at him would have made the object go through him, he would have simply believed he was there, a normal, living human.

“Well, if you’re… adjusted to your current existence, why…?”

“Because… I don’t belong here,” Sam said. He suddenly seemed sheepish: he was looking at his shoes and shifting uncomfortably and this time, Castiel really believed he was a ghost, because his movements were strangely out of sync. “I don’t know how to else explain it. I shouldn’t be here, but I don’t know how to leave.”

“So what, you have to go to Heaven or….?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said again. “I don’t know if there’s another place I’m supposed to go or if I’ll just disappear for good. I just know it’s not… right for me to stay here. Plus, it’s really annoying that everyone simply ignores you all the time. Kinda maddening.”

Despite how annoyed he couldn’t help but to be towards him, Castiel pitied him. The existence he was describing sounded incredibly lonely and complicated. Always next to his loved ones, but unable to tell them, unable to let them know he was there…

“I don’t know if I can help you, Sam,” he said.

“Really, man? After everything that I just said…?”

“But,” Castiel interrupted him, lifting up his phone from the table, “perhaps we know of someone who can.”

* * *

It rained the following day. All through the morning and the afternoon, grey clouds covered the sky and the water fell all through the day in bothersome drizzles.

Missouri Mosely stepped out of her Uber with a big black umbrella covering her. Castiel had been anxiously waiting for her at the window. Sam had disappeared again the night before, but he’d promised to come back when the psychic arrived.

Well, she was there now, but Sam wasn’t showing up. He still opened the door immediately as soon as she rang the bell.

“Castiel Milton?” she asked and offered him her hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Moseley…”

“Call me Missouri, please.”

She had a very calm, soothing voice. She didn’t look a lot like Patience. They both had the same dark skin and inquisitive brown eyes, but while Patience was tall and slim, Missouri was rather short and plum. She stepped into the house and look around for a second.

“Well, I don’t really sense anything out of place here,” she commented.

“He’s not… here right now,” Castiel said. He felt uncomfortable, almost like this was an appointment that they were both supposed to keep and he was making excuses for Sam not showing up.

“Him?” Missouri raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve seen him? You know who he is?”

Castiel opened his mouth and closed it again. He shook his head.

“I… I’m sorry, all of this is… it’s a lot. I don’t really know how to process it.”

Missouri didn’t mock him or told him he was insane. She just nodded, like a doctor that had heard a lot of patients describe the exact same symptoms for years.

“Why don’t you make a cup of coffee and we sit down to talk about it?”

So they did precisely that. Castiel brewed two cups and watched as Missouri added some sugar to hers. She took a sip and asked him to start from the beginning.

So he told her everything, about Meg, about Sam, about the way he’d shown up. Missouri let him talk for the most part, but her frown became deeper at times, like there was a part of this entire story that she couldn’t quite figure out.

“And you say you’ve never experienced anything like this before? You never had any strange occurrences when you were a child, never experienced weird nightmares…?”

“No, nothing like that. I don’t even believe half of that stuff.”

“Huh.” Missouri drank the rest of her already cold coffee and put the plate and cup back on the table silently. “Well, that is very peculiar.”

The woman who claimed speaking to ghosts was her job was telling him this situation was “peculiar”. That was not very encouraging.

“Full body apparition are amongst the rarest of this sort of phenomena and the fact that only you can not only see him but hear him and have full conversations with him, without having the gift yourself… you must have a very strong connection with this Sam person.”

“I don’t see how,” Castiel said, frustrated. “I didn’t know him or Meg prior to her joining the support group. He’s a complete stranger and I don’t understand why this is happening. If I’m going to have to live with a ghost, why couldn’t at least be someone I knew? Like my father or Kelly or… Jack.”

His voice broke down as he spoke his nephew’s name. He wasn’t planning on crying that day, but Billie said there was no point in holding back one’s emotions when they were coming out like that, so he didn’t. He covered his arms with a hand and breathed in several times in order not to have a full breakdown in front of Missouri.

She did something very strange, but oddly calming. She put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his chest, right on top of his thumping heart.

“You’ve suffered a great deal, haven’t you?” she asked, hear eyes full of empathy. “I cannot tell you everything will be fine. He meant so much to you, you’re always going to miss him. But he can’t be here, because he made peace with his death and that helped him move forwards. You’ve been trying to do the same, but it’s not easy.”

Castiel had a million other questions. Like, how could she be sure? If Sam was there, why couldn’t Jack be? And what the hell did she mean by “moving on”? Moving on where? Where was Jack now, was there truly a Heaven or had he just… gone nowhere, like Sam had said?

When he was younger, his father had raised him very religiously and Castiel had found the idea of Heaven comforting. But as he grew up, so did his doubts, and after everything that happened with Kelly and Luc…

He didn’t have time to tell any of this to Missouri. The room became colder and he didn’t even have to look up to know that Sam had returned.

“Sorry, it took so long,” he said. “I had some… issues to attend to.”

Castiel was tempted to ask what issues could he possibly have to deal with being dead, but he figured that answered his own question.

Missouri raised her eyes in Sam’s direction and raised her eyebrows.

“Ah, I see.”

“What do you see?” Castiel asked. “A way to get rid of him?”

“Woah, rude,” Sam shot back. “I thought all of this was meant to help me.”

“You said you didn’t want to be here, so getting rid of you would be helping you…”

“Sam’s seems to have a lot of unfinished business,” Missouri intervened. “And a bit of a savior complex, no offense.”

Sam scoffed, obviously very offended.

“What’s keeping him here is that he wants to make sure all of his loved ones are healing or on their way to,” Missouri continued. “I also sense that he’s concerned because his wife and his brother have a very strained relationship at the moment. He would like to see them reconciled or at least not hating each other so much.”

Castiel and Sam exchanged a surprised look. Castiel never heard Meg mention her brother-in-law and he was sure that Sam hadn’t either.

“Okay, she’s good,” Sam admitted.

“So perhaps these are the areas you should be focusing on.”

“Yes, I…. what do you mean ‘you’?” Castiel asked, horrified.

“Well, Sam came to you for a reason,” Missouri said. “So you should be the one to help him. And you need to do it soon, because even the ghosts who were the kindest people can go a little mad with isolation and lash out overtime. They can become dangerous.”

“I’ve never felt like lashing out,” Sam protested. “I would never hurt anyone!”

“No.” Castiel shook his head. “No, there’s gotta be something else. Can’t you maybe… sage him or something? Lock him up in a… container or…?”

“Boy, this ain’t Ghostbusters,” Missouri replied, rolling her eyes at him. Sam snickered softly and Castiel glared at him. “This is a lot more complex than that. Even if you don’t know the reason, and even if it is bizarre to you, this is a person who is reaching out to you for help. He might lose himself if he spends too much time in the Veil without moving on. Are you really willing to turn him down? Because if you are, then you’re not the person I thought you were and that means I’m losing my edge.”

Castiel gazed away, a little ashamed, and his eyes fell on Jack’s photo on the shelf. It was a picture of him wearing his graduation cap and his diploma, the small gap between his teeth front and center in his wide smile.

Missouri was right. Jack would be disappointed in him if he knew he was turning his back on Sam simply because he couldn’t understand how this all came to be.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Castiel said. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “I just have no idea how to go about it.”

“Well, you’re lucky enough that Sam here can tell you exactly what he needs. So it’s very important that you listen, but not just to him. This needs to be an exercise in letting go.”

“What does that mean?” Castiel asked, frowning.

“You’ll figure it out.” Missouri slapped her own knees and then stood up. “I think that’s all I can do for you. I’m sorry if it’s not enough.”

“No, not at all,” Castiel replied. “Thank you very much for coming all the way here.”

Five minutes later the Uber parked in front of the house and Missouri made her way out, still holding out her big umbrella over her head. Castiel watched her leave from his door, not entirely sure how to feel about. She felt like Missouri hadn’t really done a lot, except pushing him to do what he’d already suspected he was going to need to do.

“Awesome. You find the only legitimate psychic I have seen since dying and she tells you that _you’re_ going to have to help me out after all,” Sam commented. Castiel couldn’t tell if he was amused or irritated at how that’d gone.

“This is not precisely easy for me either.”

“I’m sorry, are you dead?”

“Nobody likes a smartass ghost, Sam.” Castiel opened the drawer on the phone table and took out a notepad and a pan. He moved to the computer desk and stared at Sam. “Very well, let’s do this.”

Sam blinked at him.

“Wait, really?”

“We need to make a plan,” Castiel replied. “You heard Missouri. You might lose yourself if we don’t act quickly. So, tell me what you know about Meg and how do you think we can help her.”

Sam sighed but he leaned against the bookshelf anyway. Castiel wondered how he was doing that without going through it. Was it a conscious effort on his part? Was he just doing because he remembered what it was like to lean into solid objects when he was alive.

“There’s not much to tell. You’ve met her. What you see with Meg is pretty much what you get. She’s not easy to get close to, but once she decides she likes you, she’s fiercely loyal and won’t leave you, ever. She’s incredibly cranky and has a very dark sense of humor, and she’s so talented and creative…”

Sam’s voice trailed off. Castiel hadn’t written anything about what he was saying, because suddenly he felt uncomfortable. These all seem like very personal details that he should in no way be entitled to know. Or better yet, he should have got to know them once he got to know Meg by himself. He shouldn’t be hearing this from a secondary source.

Sam suddenly raised his head.

“That’s it.”

“What?” Castiel asked.

“Meg hasn’t really painted or dedicated any time to her art since I died,” Sam explained. “I want her to paint again. It always made her so happy and she loved it so much. I’m sure that would help her.”

Castiel sighed. Yes, this was something concrete he could actually focus on. He wrote down: “ _Get Meg to paint again_ ”.

“Anything else?”

“Get her out of the house once in a while, and not just for the group sessions,” Sam said. “Get her a job she actually likes.”

“And what about your brother?” Castiel said, after writing that down as well.

Sam hesitated.

“They never got along. I don’t know why I expected this to make any difference,” he sighed. “Something… something happened in the hospital, after the crash, after I died. I don’t know what it was, but it made Dean hate Meg. He didn’t like her before, but now it’s like they outright detest each other.”

Castiel tapped the notebook with his pen.

“You know it’s very likely we won’t get them to reconcile, right?”

“Yes, I know. And I was worried about them, because they’re both not really good at… people. But Dean got back together with Lisa… she’s the mother of his kid and his ex-girlfriend,” Sam explained when Castiel tilted his head in confusion. “And he still has mom. He’s not fine, but he has a support system.”

“What about Meg’s family?”

“Her dad’s in jail and she cut her brother out of her life. She never told me why, but… it was probably not good.”

“So… what you really want is for Meg to have someone to rely on. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Dean.”

Sam reflected on this for a moment.

“Yes, just seeing her have someone she can trust would be enough.”

“Very well,” Castiel said. He wrote down that last thing and underlined it, because he had the impression that was the most important part of it. “So, how do we go about this? Should I call Meg or…?”

“You don’t have her number.”

“But you do.”

“Dude, I died in 2015. I hadn’t memorized a number in fifteen years,” Sam said, with such a condescending tone Castiel would’ve definitely punched him if he could. “Besides, she didn’t give it to you, so how are you going to explain having it?”

“I’m assuming ‘ _your dead husband wanted me to have it_ ’ is out of the question.”

“Unless you want to spend a lovely weekend in the nearest psych ward and get a restraining order thrown your way…”

Castiel glared at him, but the comment gave him something else to think about.

“You don’t want me to tell her, do you? That you’re still here, that I can see you?”

Sam opened and closed his mouth. Then he clenched his jaw and shook his head.

“No. She can’t know. She’s already holding on too tight to me. If she were to know I’m actually here…”

Castiel nodded. Yes, that sounded like it would be counterproductive if the whole objective of this was to get Meg to let go of him.

“So how do I do this? How do I get an opening with her?” Castiel asked. “She was pretty upset last week; I don’t know if she would listen to me.”

“I’m not sure she’s even going to go back to the group again,” Sam agreed. “Knowing Meg, she felt humiliated that everyone saw her cry.”

They both sat down in silence, pondering this problem. Sam moved suddenly, startling Castiel.

“I have an idea. Pick up your phone tonight.”

“What do you mean? Sam?” Castiel asked, but he was gone already.

Well, there was not much more that Castiel could do, other than wait.

Hours later, he was halfway into reheating the leftover pizza from the party when his phone rang. He almost jumped out of his skin, but he looked around and saw no traces of Sam anywhere.

It was unknown number calling and normally he would have rejected the call, but he remembered what Sam had told, so he quickly answered it.

“Hello?”

“Oh, shit, no.”

It was Meg on the other end. Castiel froze slightly hearing her voice. She had such a beautiful voice, like a low, raspy whisper that made everything she said sound slightly sexy…

This was not the time to be thinking like this. He needed to concentrate.

“Meg?”

“Yeah, dammit. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you,” she said. “I was just coming out of the shower and my phone apparently fell off the night-table and the contact list opened by itself… I don’t even know how it did that. It’s been going crazy for a while; I should really just change it. Anyway, sorry to bother you…”

“You’re not bothering me,” Castiel assured her. “In fact, it’s… it’s great to hear from you. I’ve been thinking about you.”

“You were?”

A lot. Even before her dead husband showed up. Obviously, he omitted that last part.

“I was worried about you, because you left so abruptly last week. I was afraid I had said something or done something…”

“No, not at all,” Meg assured him. “Actually, I was thinking about that too.”

There was a pause. Castiel was tempted to ask what she meant, but he held his tongue. Sam had said she was very closed off, so there was no point in pressuring her into speaking when she wasn’t ready to do it.

“I was going to apologize when I saw you again yesterday,” she admitted. “But you didn’t show up.”

It almost sounded like she was blaming him. Castiel chuckled.

“It was Jack’s anniversary. I had his friends over.”

“Right, you mentioned that. How was it?”

Castiel never missed a chance to flaunt just how proud he was of “his” kids, so of course he told her: about Alexis’ practices, about Claire and Kaia’s workshop, Eliot’s new job…

Before he realized it, he’d spoken for almost twenty minutes without stop.

“I’m sorry, I must be boring you.”

“No, not at all,” Meg said, and she at least sounded sincere. “It’s cute how much you care about them.”

If anyone else had said anything of the sort to him, he would have thought it was extremely condescending. Coming from her, it made his heart melt.

Dammit, Balthazar was right. He was head over heels for her and the closer he got, the worse it was going to get.

“Cas, are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here, I’m just… not sure what to say,” he admitted. “Thank you. I do try to be there for them to the best of my abilities.”

“I think that’s why I like you. You try, but you don’t try, you know what I mean?”

“I have… no idea what you’re saying, I’m sorry,” he said, laughing.

“It’s hard to explain. You try, but it’s effortless. Like, I believe you really try to help people because you think it’s the right thing to do and not because you could get something out of it. It’s refreshing.”

It was the same thing Missouri had said about him. But this time, Castiel didn’t feel guilty because he wasn’t doing enough to help Sam. He felt like she was thanking him, even though she literally had no idea what he was doing.

“I’m rambling, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” he assured her. “I like to hear you ramble.”

Meg stayed quiet for a few seconds, and then she laughed as well. It was a soft, deep sound, like a purr.

“Well, you might hear me ramble even more the next time we see each other.”

“I look forwards to it.”

“Okay.” Meg chuckled. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing now.”

“Okay,” Castiel repeated. He felt like an idiot teenager, because he didn’t want to hang up first, he wanted to keep talking to her, but his mind was blank when trying to come up with a topic. “I, uh… I’ll see you on Friday, then.”

“I’ll see you. Bye.”

His pizza had gone cold while he spoke while Meg and he didn’t feel like heating it up again, so he just ate it cold. He half-expected Sam to show up again, but he was sure the accidental call in Meg’s phone had been his doing and perhaps that had exhausted him for the time being.

It was so strange to think that he was really going to do this. He was really going to do this, he was really going to try and help the ghost. And part of that involved getting closer to Meg, which was a very dangerous thing for him to do.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her laughter.

Later, as he laid down in bed, staring at his ceiling, he made a resolution. Whatever happened, he was not going to fall in love with Meg.


	9. Closer

Meg couldn’t help a sense of relief the next Friday when she rolled up to the library and found Castiel waiting outside. She didn’t know if he was waiting for her or not, but the second she came into his line of vision, he smiled and waved at her.

So he wasn’t weirded out at all about how she’d accidentally called him and then talked to him for thirty minutes. That was a good sign.

“Hey,” she said when she was close enough.

“Hello. Did you have a good week?”

“It was a week,” Meg said, shrugging. Because really, having random people screaming at her wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. “You?”

She immediately regretted asking that. How the hell could she had forgotten it was Jack’s anniversary?

Castiel scratched the back of his neck and shrugged slightly.

“I had a week too,” he said and left it at that.

Meg had no idea why she felt so awkward all the sudden, face to face with him, when it had been so easy to talk to him on the phone. Maybe because on the phone she didn’t have to look at his ridiculously handsome face and impossibly blue eyes.

She needed to get herself together.

“Let’s go in,” she suggested clumsily.

“Very well.”

He followed a few steps behind her and this time, he sat next to her in the circle. Linda hadn’t come in the last couple of weeks, because she was apparently helping Kevin get settled at college, but Alicia, Max’s sister, had begun showing up regularly.

“I don’t know how I feel without my mom,” she said that day. “I don’t know how to… I mean, I am functioning. I am going to work; I am going through the motions. But I keep waiting for the phone to ring and for it to be her. When I’m on the street and I see a woman with her hair, I keep waiting for her to turn around and have my mom’s face. It feels like she isn’t gone, in a sense.”

“She’s not really gone. She lives in your memory,” Billie assured her. “But at the same time, it’s understandable. Your loss is still recent and it’s hard to think that someone who has been there for us all of our lives isn’t anymore. It’s like… a phantom limb.”

“Keeps happening to me too,” Meg said. “Sometimes when I’m half asleep I forget my legs don’t work anymore so I just roll over and fall off the bed a lot.”

She didn’t know why she told that story and she didn’t know why she expected them to laugh. On the contrary, they all looked at her with horror and mild pity, like it was terrible of her to joke about something like that.

Castiel coughed, though. It sounded very much like a cough, but when she looked at him, she realized that his lips were curved up in a smirk.

“Yes, Meg,” Billie said, after clearing up her throat. “You have the added trauma of having some pretty major changes happening to your body…”

“I wouldn’t call it a trauma, exactly,” Meg replied. “I miss dancing, I guess. I miss going for walks. But what I miss the most is people treating me like a person and laughing when I make a self-deprecating joke.” She glared at all the people in the group, but none of them seemed to recognize she was talking about all of them. “Really, I’m not going to say it’s not a big deal, because it was huge when it first happened, but I’ve adapted. The real problems are other people.”

“How do you mean?”

“The other day, I was at the grocery store, going about my business, when this random woman stopped me and told me she would pray for my recovery,” Meg said, grimacing at the memory. “Other people get rude, like they ask me why I need a wheelchair, I look young and healthy and then they get really mad when I tell them it’s none of their business. There’s asshole bus drivers, but I can’t take a paratransit every single time, so if I want to go anywhere, I need to put up with them. And let me tell you, if this building hadn’t had a ramp, I wouldn’t even have tried to come in.”

She realized she had been rambling on for several minutes about things that had nothing to do with grief or mourning or Sam and went quiet. However, Billie didn’t reprimand her for it.

“So in a way, what you’re having trouble with is other people’s reaction to your new reality.”

“Yes. And I can’t control that,” Meg said, shrugging. “It’s annoying, and it’s a thousand little things, but they just… mount up.”

“Do you think maybe that’s another reason you have isolated yourself?” Billie suggested. “So you don’t have to deal with these reactions?”

Meg opened her mouth and closed it again.

“Dammit, I hate it when you do that,” she complained.

“What thing?”

“Say something that makes way too much sense.”

This time the laughter was generalized. Perhaps they couldn’t relate to forgetting about not being able to walk, but they had all been at the receiving end of one of Billie’s acute observations. Billie herself gave her a tight-lipped smile.

“I get it. There’s a lot of prejudice in the world,” she continued. “There’s a lot of people who may seem well-intentioned, but end up being hurtful despite it. But at the same time, by choosing to avoid them, by choosing to remove yourself from society, what you’re doing is depriving yourself of company and support.”

“I thought support was the whole point of this group,” Meg pointed out.

“It is. And it’s a great step that you’re here, but there’s a lot more for you out there, Meg, and you’re not reaching for it.”

Meg didn’t really know how to answer to that, because a part of her was sure that Billie was right. But the stubborn part of herself still felt like she needed to argue:

“I can’t reach for most things that are too high these days,” she said. No one laughed at her joke and she sighed. “Come on, you’ve all talked about it. About how you’re doing everything you’re supposed to be doing: getting rid of their stuff, going to work, talking to people and it’s still not enough. What is going to be enough? Are we supposed to be happy and positive all the time? Because I was never like that, even before all of this.”

“That is actually an excellent point.”

“It is?” Meg asked, surprised. She thought that Billie was going to tell her she was a drag and she needed to stop bringing everyone down with her.

“What is enough for someone varies from person to person, and from day to day,” Billie said. “Some days it may feel like getting out of bed and taking a shower is enough. Sometimes it may feel like going to work and earning money it’s enough, so you don’t really want to put the energy into other things as well when you get back home. Your enough might not look like enough to someone else, but that’s okay. And for the days when you can’t even do enough? Well, you need to learn to forgive yourself for those. And if your enough isn’t making you happy, then perhaps it’s time to ask for help.”

Meg opened her mouth and closed it once more, like a fish struggling to breath out of the water.

“Dammit, you did it again,” she complained, and the people of the group laughed.

Aaron started sharing about how he was helping his grandma now that her grandpa was gone, but Meg was only half-listening to him. Billie, as usual, had managed to struck a nerve with her.

All of this time, she had told herself over and over that she was doing enough just by staying alive. But the truth was, she was lonely and she was miserable and having absolutely no fun. So… maybe her “enough” just wasn’t good enough anymore?

Castiel accompanied her to the bus stop, as usual.

“I saw this documentary about wombats the other day. Is it okay if I texted you the name? I think you would definitely be interested…”

Meg stopped and turned her head towards him.

“Do you want to have dinner with me?”

Castiel stopped what he was saying and stared at her, astonished.

“You mean… right now?”

“Well, I’m hungry now and there’s no time like the present, right?” she said, shrugging.

Castiel kept looking at her with eyes wide open and Meg was afraid that he would ask why. Why had she decided that so suddenly, why was she asking him. The answer was so simple as to be a bit ridiculous.

She just didn’t feel like going home to her usual silence and emptiness that night. She wanted to enjoy something different for once.

And she liked talking to Castiel. Whether he was talking proudly about his kids or rambling about koalas or whatever they were, she liked listening to his voice.

She wouldn’t have told him that reason, though. It was a bit embarrassing how much she liked this guy.

“I, uh…” Castiel raised his head and stayed completely immobile for a few seconds. Meg had the impression he was listening to someone else, but it passed so fast she could have easily just imagined it. “Yes. I would like that. I’m hungry too.”

“Great. You know any good restaurants nearby?”

She was glad he didn’t take out his phone and looked for one. It felt a bit more spontaneous to roam around the street until they found a little Italian place a few blocks away. The windows let out a warm, golden, inviting glow and the air was scented with the smell of garlic and sauce that made Meg’s stomach growl.

It didn’t have a ramp in the entrance, but there were tables outside that were mostly unoccupied. Apparently, not a lot of people wanted to sit outside in the early October night and yes, it was a bit chilly, but Meg still found the weather pleasant enough.

“Winter sucks, though,” she complained as she commented this with Castiel. “People are always going on and on about how romantic snow is, but I don’t see the appeal at all.”

“I don’t really mind winter. My friend Balthazar would tell you it’s because I am an extreme introvert and the cold provides me with an excuse not to go outside,” he commented. “But I prefer it over summer for other reasons.”

“What is that?”

“When it’s cold, you can layer up as much as you wish. When it’s hot, you can only take off your clothes up to a certain point before you risk an indecent exposure charge.”

Meg laughed, a little longer and louder than she was intending to. The comment was funny, dammit, but the thought of Castiel taking off his clothes had suddenly flustered her and she was desperate to hide that.

She really needed to get a grip on herself. Castiel was the first friend she had made in years and she wasn’t about to ruin it with her awkwardness.

It was so weird, though. In her teens and twenties, she had been an absolute slut. One of the reasons it had taken her so long to accept her feelings for Sam, that they were more than just friendly affection mixed up with a bit of lust, was that she hadn’t been ready to settle down for one person when there were so many she could meet out there. After Sam had died, though, it was like her libido had died with him. She hadn’t thought about sex, she hadn’t felt the need for it, she hadn’t even tried to figure out the new logistics of it regarding how her body was now.

But now she was sitting there, eating pasta with Castiel and listening to him speak about dumb Australian wildlife and she couldn’t help but to notice the cute dimples in his cheeks, how full his lips were, how rugged his hands were.

She wasn’t going to do anything about it, though. It was nice to just sit there and appreciate this very handsome man. It was no different than what she’d done when she was married to Sam and happened to catch a glimpse of a good looking stranger on the street. It didn’t mean she wanted to fuck them; it didn’t mean she wanted to cheat. She just happened to have functioning eyes.

A little voice in the back of her head told her that these were very different situations, but she shushed it quickly.

“So how about you?” Castiel asked, when he was done talking about the documentary.

Meg moved her food around in her plate.

“Nothing interesting has been going on with me,” she said, grimacing.

“Really? You haven’t had any interesting phone calls?” he asked, with a smirk. “Because when I worked at the call center, I had some very… colorful conversations with some costumers.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Meg chuckled. “I can’t really have colorful conversations, but boy, do they like to scream at me.”

Castiel put his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, staring at her intently. Meg laughed and went through her mental catalogue of problematic costumers.

“There was this woman was so pissed off her shuttle hadn’t arrived to pick her up. Turns out that her flight had arrived earlier than it was meant to and our company had no way of knowing that, but she was furious and insisted that we should have kept up with the flight schedules without her calling us about it.”

“We had a client who was very annoyed that his package had come when he wasn’t home,” Castiel told her. “The package was perfectly fine. None of the parts were missing, it was exactly what he had ordered, but he was angry that our delivery man had walked up to his door and left it there. He insisted we should have called him to let him know it was coming so he could wait for it.”

“I had a person call us up when his flight was delayed. He wanted us to take him back to the hotel and then back to the airport, but his hotel was an hour away from the airport and by the time he made the round trip, it would be time for him to board the plane again. He seemed very confused as to how that worked, but at least he entertained himself screaming at me for the two hours that the delay lasted.”

“I had a lady who didn’t understand why we had delivered two packages to her door when she’d only ordered one. The second one, mind you, was a free present that came with what she had ordered. I don’t even remember what it was now, but she was adamant about not wanting it even though it was free.”

“That’s a good one. I had this guy who was so angry because the driver couldn’t avoid every single bump and hole as if the states of the road abroad were our fault…”

Meg stopped talking. She’d talked to that guy just a few months before and the reason she remembered him so vividly was because that was the night her lights went out and her computer refused to show any Internet page except for the support group’s one.

Her face must have showed her thoughts trailing off, because Castiel frowned at her and asked:

“Meg?”

Should she tell him? Would he think she was insane? It was probably a random, weird coincidence, but maybe…

“I’m fine,” she assured him, smiling again. “So, your turn. Tell me about your horrible costumers.”

“Uh… well, we had this couple at the furniture store who wanted a crib for their baby…”

Those stories alone could have filled an entire night. The conversation moved from from them to just the worst people they had met in general. Castiel had an ex that sounded like she had nothing to envy to Disney stepmoms, and she had an anecdote or two about the Karens at the HOA that made him laugh.

She really liked his laughter.

They finished the main dishes and ordered dessert and then a cup of coffee. Meg couldn’t even remember the last time she had eaten so much. She felt incredibly full, but also content.

This was nice. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shared a casual dinner with a friend, and that might be because she didn’t really have friends anymore. She had lost contact with college classmates and most of the people she’d met afterwards had been actually Sam’s friends.

She didn’t know why she brought this up to Castiel. Perhaps because she thought he would understand.

“He was the social one,” she said, grimacing. “I was fun in college and people wanted to hang out with me because they knew I could get them into the best parties and get them the best weed, but when you hit your thirties and start having to act like an adult, suddenly those things aren’t virtues anymore.”

“I guess that depends what circles you run in,” Castiel said.

“We ran in very exclusive circles, with very fat and rich lawyers, and their very beautiful, fancy wives and sugar babies,” Meg said, grimacing. “Even the ones who weren’t significantly older than us acted like their shit didn’t smell. They all kept saying how brilliant Sam was and what a wonderful future he had ahead of them…”

She rolled her eyes, but the truth was she wanted to stop talking about it.

Castiel seemed a little taken aback by her vocabulary.

“You, uh… you never mentioned to Sam you were annoyed by the company he kept?”

“I mentioned it to him, alright,” Meg huffed. “We fought over it time and again, but it was his career, they were his future potential partners, I had to be there for him to talk him up and show what a nice, perfect, heteronormative life we lead. What could I do? I had to be there for him, you know? I had to support him.”

She closed her mouth and then shook her head.

“I must sound like such an ungrateful bitch. My jobs paid like shit. If we had nice things at all was because Sam busted his ass working for that firm.”

“No, not at all,” Castiel said. “I’m sure… Sam knew those things annoyed you and he was… thankful that you would come with him to the… dinner parties and office potlucks and such…”

Meg stared at him quizzically, wondering why his speech had grown more hesitant and why he seemed to be staring over her shoulder, but then he moved his head and his eyes were on hers once again.

“I’m sure he knew how much of a sacrifice those things were for you.”

Meg snorted.

“Well, that’s what it’s like, isn’t it?” she groaned. “You can’t be married to someone without sacrificing some things just like you can’t make a burger without killing a cow.”

Castiel chuckled at the metaphor. He opened his mouth, hesitated and then closed it again.

“What is it?” Meg asked, squinting at him.

“Nothing.” He quickly checked his phone and changed the topic. “We should get going. It’s getting quite late.”

“Right.” Meg pushed down the sadness she felt at that comment. The night couldn’t last forever, of course. “You mind waiting for the bus with me?”

“Or I could give you a ride.”

“You don’t have to do that, Cas…”

“It’s no bother at all,” he assured her. “Where do you live?”

Meg told him and he assured him it was but a short diversion from his usual route. She ended up accepting. In any other occasions, with any other person, she would’ve fought harder to stay, to refuse, to take the damn bus. It was a matter of pride, of proving to herself and others that she didn’t need people giving her rides and doing her favors.

But if she was being honest with herself, taking the ride was much less of a hassle. And she didn’t want to stop talking with Castiel just yet.

“You never got married?” she asked him in the car, to keep the conversation going.

“It just didn’t happen for me,” Castiel said, shrugging. “I mean… maybe I would have got married, had some children on my own, if I didn’t have to make some very drastic life decisions when the responsibility of taking care of Jack fell on me. And then I didn’t have to look for a partner that was just good for me, it had to be someone who was willing to care for Jack as well.”

Meg looked out the window for a moment. She realized that Castiel talked about taking over Jack’s upbringing when he was very young, but she hadn’t yet dared to ask him why. Had it been a choice he had to make? Why he’d felt compelled to make it? There was a story there, but she decided not to pry.

“And now?”

Castiel stayed quiet for so long Meg began regretting having asked.

“Now… I don’t mean to sound like everything was terrible. I loved raising Jack, I loved taking on that role for him. But the whole experience has put me off having any children on my own. It’s not just the fear that I might lose them the way I lost Jack — I know that’s something I wouldn’t be able to endure again. But it’s also the fact that raising a child is a lot of work and sacrifice that I had to learn to make on the fly… and I feel exhausted just thinking about it now.” He sighed. “I’m in my forties. I don’t want to start a family I will have to dedicate another twenty years of my life to raise.”

He turned on Meg’s street and slowed down a little as he searched for the numbers.

“Do you think it’s selfish of me?” he asked. His voice had dropped, almost like he expected Meg to say that yes, it was extremely selfish and he should feel terrible for that decision.

But she wasn’t about to tell him that, of course.

“I think it’s human of you.”

Castiel looked back at her and a shy smile appeared on her lips.

And dammit, the only thing selfish about his choice was that he was never going to pass down those very good genes he had going there.

She squashed that thought before it could reach her mouth.

“Well, this one’s mine,” she said, pointing out at her home.

“Right.”

Castiel quickly exited the car, got her chair from the trunk of the car and pushed it to the passenger seat. Meg sighed, relieved to get back on her wheels and turned around to tell Castiel goodnight…

He was staring her house with a deep frown.

“What is it?” Meg asked, a little worried that he’s seen a raccoon or something that she couldn’t make out.

“Your porch,” he said, pointing at it.

“What about my porch?”

“It doesn’t have a ramp.”

Yes, that had been the first thing Meg noticed when she came back from the hospital in her chair for the first time. It was the first time it had really dawn on her just how different everything would be from then on.

“No, it does not.”

“How do you get inside your house?”

“Through the garage, mainly.”

“Isn’t that uncomfortable?”

Meg shrugged. It was, but she had adapted. She told Castiel as much.

“No.” He shook his head. “You should be able to walk into your own house through the front door. Let me build you a ramp.”

“What?” Meg asked. Because the offer was so generous it sounded almost unreal.

“Let me build you one. I’m a carpenter. It won’t be hard at all.”

This time it was her turn to be left speechless.

“Well, I… I don’t really know what the HOA would say about that.”

“Meg, if half of what you told me during dinner was true, then they are absolute idiots,” he argued. “And besides, it seems to me like you don’t care what they have to say anyways.”

Well, he definitely had a point there. Meg really did screwing over them whenever she could.

“Alright. I think… yes, we can do this.”

The way his eyes lit up, as if the possibility of building her something was his most coveted Christmas present, made her squirm a little. Goddammit, he needed to stop being so handsome while doing literally anything.

“Very well. Is it okay if I come on Sunday to start that project?”

“Sunday. That sounds perfect.”

“Around ten?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He smiled at her and Meg’s heart did something very strange, something she really didn’t mean for it to do. It fluttered and it sent a shot of adrenaline coursing through her veins, touching every inch of her body. She wanted to grab his hand, pull him down and…

“I guess I’ll see you then,” she said, turning her chair in what she hoped wasn’t an abrupt gesture.

“See you…”

She had to wait for the garage’s door to lift and it had never seemed like a slower, more tedious process. She willed herself not to look over her shoulder, but once she was inside, she allowed herself a little peek. Castiel had gone back inside of his car, but he hadn’t turned it on just yet. He was waiting for her to get inside safely, because the second her door started going back down, she heard the roar of his engine as he drove away.

She only breathed easy again once she was inside of her home, sitting on her couch and having a bit of a crisis.

She had done it. She had reached for something else, she had started to cultivate a new friendship and that was good, wasn’t it? That was exactly what Billie had been talking about.

She couldn’t explain why she set her gaze on the green mug and asked out loud:

“Sam, what the hell am I doing?”


	10. Work

Castiel spent most of Saturday looking for pictures of porches with ramps in his office at the furniture store. Some had a little ramp just to the side, others had a longer one that seemed to take up too much space, but looked less steep. Some could be built over her existing steps, but others would require basically destroying them and rebuilding the porch. Unable to decide, he picked up his phone and sent several to Meg.

Balthazar knocked on his door as he was wondering how much plywood he was going to need for the project.

“Darling, I have some positively amazing news,” he announced. “We are going out tonight.”

And he smiled as if he expected Castiel to be thrilled about that.

He was mostly confused, as usual when Balthazar tried to take him somewhere.

“Umh…”

“You don’t have to worry about a thing. I will pick you up at your home and I’ll take you there. It’s a wine-tasting that my guest from the other night decided was just perfect…”

“Balthazar,” Castiel interrupted him. “I don’t want to go wine-tasting with your latest… conquest.”

In fact, it was very strange that Balthazar was keeping in touch with this person, whoever they were. He didn’t take those relationships seriously enough to see them more than once or twice, depending on a criteria Castiel had stopped trying to understand. Balthazar had told him one time that he thought that he just wasn’t made for that sort of “monogamous commitment”. He’d spat out those words like they were dirty.

“Why not?” Balthazar asked, tilting his head. “You are going to adore Rowena. She is this beautiful redheaded thing and she has some very good looking friends…”

Castiel stared at him with a blank expression.

“Is this about my… mini breakdown from two weeks ago?” he asked.

“Of course it’s about that,” Balthazar stated, because really, there was no point in denying it. “I want to see you healthy and happy and I thought meeting someone new, someone you don’t feel obligated to keep a distance from, would be good for you.”

“I don’t feel obligated to keep a distance from Meg,” Castiel said, knowing as the words escaped his mouth that they were a blatant lie and that Balthazar was, of course, not going to believe them for a second.

“Sure,” Balthazar said, and then completely disregarded it: “So, I’ll pick you up at seven. Make sure to wear something nice, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be very formal…”

“I can’t go,” Castiel interrupted him. “I have somewhere to be in the morning.”

He showed him the pictures of porches with ramps that he had printed and explained to Balthazar what he was planning to do. His friend gave him a quizzical look with his grey eyes that made Castiel increasingly uncomfortable.

“What?”

“Is she paying you to do this?” he asked. “Or are you doing it out of the goodness of your heart?”

“I offered her to do it. Why, what’s wrong with that?”

Balthazar leaned back on the chair.

“You’re white-knighting, my friend.”

“I am not!” Castiel said. He hoped he hadn’t sounded offended at the mere suggestion, but in his heart, he knew he’d already failed.

“No? So you’re not going out of your way to be kind to this weary widow in the hopes that she’ll fall into your arms?”

Castiel opened his mouth and went quiet. Not because he didn’t have an answer to that, but because he’d just spotted Sam hovering over Balthazar’s shoulder. He was staring back at him with an eyebrow raised.

And suddenly Castiel wished he hadn’t admitted to him that he was actually crushing on Meg, because… well, Sam was still her husband. Meg obviously still had feelings for him and she was struggling to reconcile that with his absence. What was the etiquette when it came to wanting to date a dead man’s wife when the dead man himself was haunting him?

It didn’t matter.

“I have my reasons to be doing this,” Castiel said. “It’s not that Meg isn’t a beautiful and interesting woman, but I don’t have that sort of intentions towards her.”

“Then, what are your intentions?” Balthazar asked, tilting his head.

"Yes, Castiel," Sam intervened. "What _are_ your intentions?"

Castiel thought about it for a second, because it was very clear that neither Balthazar nor Sam were going to let this issue go.

“I see a lot of myself in her,” he admitted. His hand involuntarily grabbed at his chest, right over his heart. “In my worst days, in my… darkest moment, as you would say. I think she isn’t as… sunken as I was, but still. I want to do for her what I wish someone had done for me back then.”

“Good answer,” Sam quipped.

Balthazar took a lot longer to process that.

“You wound me, dear friend,” he said, after a moment, and Castiel knew right away it wasn’t one of Balthazar’s dramatic flairs. He really was hurt by his words. “I tried to be there for you and if I failed in any way…”

“That is not what I meant,” Castiel said, cringing. Because, to an extent, not even Balthazar had truly known just how low he’d sunk. “You were there for me, of course, but I didn’t want to be helped. Until I was facing down the possibility of losing my own life, I didn’t think I deserved it. So I didn’t know how to ask for it, even though I knew it was there for me to reach. Meg… it’s different with her.”

“How so?”

That merited another thoughtful pause.

“I think she wants to be helped, but she’s the kind of person who is used to do everything by herself, so she doesn’t know how to ask. Until she figures out what she needs, I’m trying to make her life easier, even if it’s in a small way.”

Sam nodded, approvingly. He then disappeared in the blink of an eye and was suddenly behind him, sending shivers down Castiel’s spine.

“I like this one,” he said, pointing at one of the big ramps with handrails that Castiel had thought was a little too big and cumbersome.

Balthazar hugged himself a little.

“Is there something wrong with the thermostat?” he asked. “I swear it’s suddenly very chilly here.”

Castiel was about to tell him it must be his imagination when his phone chimed with a message from Meg.

 _This one_ , it said simply. It was a steeper one that was built over the stairs of the porch and looked simpler to build. Sam frowned at it.

“Is that going to be safe? Won’t she roll backwards if she uses that one?”

“What do you think?” Castiel asked, showing the picture to Balthazar.

He looked at it and then up at Castiel. He half-expected to tell him that looked like a very simple project to complete and insist on the wine-tasting, but instead, Balthazar said:

“I think you might want to take the truck for this.”

* * *

Sunday morning was a beautiful day, with blue skies and the sun beaming down on the suburbs, and with any luck, it was going to stay that way for the rest of the day.

Castiel parked the store’s truck in front of Meg’s house. He expected to see Sam floating around, but the ghost was nowhere to be found that day. He took out his toolbox and trotted towards the house, glancing at the garden. The grass was overgrown and some leaves that nobody was raking had fallen over the lawn. The weather was still nice, but there was an autumn atmosphere to Meg’s garden that felt strangely soothing.

He had just raised his hand to knock when the door swung on its hinges. At first Castiel thought Sam had opened it, but when he looked down, he found Meg on her chair, looking at him with big wide eyes.

“Umh… hey,” she said.

“Hello,” Castiel greeted her. He tried to ignore the weirdness of it all and smiled at her. “Am I late?”

“No, you’re just on… just on time,” she said. “Come on in.”

Castiel couldn’t help but notice she looked very pretty that day. She didn’t wear a lot of make-up to the group sessions, and Meg had told him specifically it was because she didn’t know when she was going to cry again and didn’t want to ride the bus with a face full of smeared mascara. Now, however, she had put on a darker shade of lipstick and her eyelashes looked a bit longer than usual. She was wearing a white shirt with cut out sleeves that revealed part of her shoulders. He noticed a little tattoo in one of them, a lotus flower adorned with splashes of color, and made a mental note to ask about it later. Her hair also looked different, puffier and luscious as it cascaded over her shoulders and down her back.

Had she got dressed up like that for him?

“Is there anything wrong?” Meg asked.

Castiel realized he’d frozen in the foyer and shook his head.

“No, of course not.”

Walking into her house was strange. He couldn’t see much, except for the big living room and the kitchen, where he caught a glimpse of a table overflowing with papers and a computer practically buried in them.

Meg stopped her chair next to a coffee table and pointed at arm chair for him to sit.

“So, how is this done?” she asked.

“I’m going to have to measure the steps, cut the plywood and… well, it shouldn’t take longer than a couple of hours. I will also have to carve the handrails and paint them and come back to install them another day, but the brunt of the work should be done before lunchtime.”

“Oh, so fast?”

“I am efficient,” Castiel said, with a smile. “And also, it’s not really that complicated of a job.”

Meg nodded. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking from her blank expression.

“I see.”

“Is there a problem?” Castiel asked, frowning.

“No, it’s just… it’s stupid.”

“You can tell me, Meg.”

Meg sighed and looked around.

“Well, when they came to install damn stair lift, they told me it would take like an hour, but they were here a full afternoon and they were… so annoying about it. Every time they tried it, something would go wrong, so they had to go over everything every single time,” she explained. “Afterwards, I was just done with strangers being in my house I told myself I would get a ramp for the front porch later. And then I never did. And now you come here and tell me it’ll take like, a morning. I just feel stupid for having put it off for so long.”

“Oh, no, don’t,” Castiel said. “I understand what you mean, but I also understand that sometimes even the smallest of tasks seems like a monumental obstacle. Don’t beat yourself over it.”

“If you say so,” Meg said, unconvinced. “So, what do you need?”

“Do you have a plug in your garage?”

He understood that part of being there was getting closer to Meg, but also he didn’t want to bother her, so he insisted she stayed inside and did whatever she would be normally doing on a Sunday morning. Meg reminded him to tell her if he needed anything else, and then he got to work.

He measured up the stairs and calculated how much wood he would need. Meg’s garage was a little bit messy, with boxes piled up everywhere, but he managed to improvise a work station and got to cut the planks with his circular saw. He would need to pile them up together and use wood glue…

“Is that safe?”

Castiel almost jumped out of his skin and glared at Sam, who was leaning against the wall and watching him work closely.

“Do you realize I am working with very sharp instruments here?” he asked, with a groan. “Do you want me to cut my fingers and traumatize Meg further?”

“Sorry,” Sam said, cringing, and for the first time, it looked like he was actually embarrassed at having surprised Castiel like that. “I just want to make sure that you build a good ramp for Meg. The stair lift people were kind of half-assing it.”

Castiel stared at him blankly.

“Were you the reason they took so long?”

“I’m not going to apologize for looking after my wife,” Sam declared.

“Well, there’s nothing you need to worry about,” Castiel assured him. “I’ll make it safe.”

He stepped out of the garage to look for another tool… only to feel like he was being watched. Not by Sam; he had got a bit used to his presence by now, but by a curious pair of eyes drilling into the back of his neck.

When he turned around, he saw a man staring sternly at him over the fence.

“Good morning,” Castiel greeted him, wondering if he’d heard the one-sided conversation he was having with the ghost.

“Who are you?” the man asked. He was leaning against a rake and glaring at Castiel like he’d kicked his puppy.

“My name’s Castiel Milton,” he said, stretching his hand over the fence. “I’m a friend of Meg’s.”

The man didn’t shake his hand nor offer his own name in return.

“That’s Don Richardson,” Sam explained to Castiel. “He’s kind of a dick.”

Castiel could have deduced that without Sam really telling him about it. He lowered his hand.

“And what exactly do you think you’re doing?” Don asked.

“I’m… building a ramp for her?” Castiel asked. He eyed Sam, unsure as to why the hell this man was interested in that.

“Did she fill out the permissions with the homeowners association for that?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel answered, sincerely. “She must have, I believe.”

But given the contempt in Meg’s voice when she’d talked about it, Castiel highly doubted it.

“Well, she didn’t,” Don Richardson stated. “You know how I know?”

“He’s part of the board of directors,” Sam said, sighing.

“I am part of the board of directors,” Don said almost at the same time. “And I think I would remember if I had seen those forms.”

“Christ, what a dick!” Sam exclaimed and Castiel was glad that he was verbalizing exactly what he was thinking.

“I’m sorry, why does she need to fill out a permission for something like this?” Castiel asked. His neighborhood didn’t have a HOA, his house was smaller compared to Meg’s and he definitely didn't think any of his neighbors would care what he did with his own damn front porch.

“It’s a design change,” Don explained, speaking very slowly as if he thought Castiel wouldn’t get it. “All the homes in the community must keep a similar design, according to our rule book. If she wanted that ramp, she could have at least bothered to ask for our permission.”

Sam was seething by his side. Castiel could tell because the temperature had dropped one or two degrees around them.

“Yes, see… Meg needs that to go in and out of her house.”

“She didn’t need it before.” Don shrugged. “Look, I sympathize with Meg’s struggles, okay? We make an exception for her in a bunch of ways. We only fine her half of what’s stipulated because of her landscaping violations.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Castiel said. He didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in his tone. Sam snorted.

“I’ve told her, time and again, if she wants me to come over and fix her garden up for her, I will. I also know some very good gardeners that she could hire if she wants to,” Don said. His nostrils were flaring now, as if he was barely containing his rage. “She keeps pushing her limits and one day, we’re not going to give her special treatment anymore.”

“She doesn’t want special treatment,” Castiel said, frowning. “She just wants her home to be accessible, why is that an issue?”

“It’s an issue because she needs to respect the HOA’s rules…”

“Listen, Cas,” Sam said, distracting him from whatever Don was telling him next. “Repeat exactly what I’m going to say: if you want to prevent me from building this ramp…”

“… then go ahead,” Castiel repeated. “But I hope you and the HOA are ready to fight a discrimination lawsuit.”

Don blinked at him, taken aback.

“What?”

“You’re preventing a disabled woman from making her own house more comfortable for herself on the basis of something as frivolous as design codes,” Castiel continued. “How do you think that’s going to hold up in court?”

Don straightened his shoulders. He was clearly uncomfortable, but trying to hide it.

“Are you a lawyer or something?”

“I’m not, but you probably know that Meg’s late husband Sam was,” Castiel pointed out. “She still keeps in contact with several of his friends and co-workers. Any of them would be delighted to take this case for her cost free. Meanwhile, how much of the HOA budget is going to go into fighting this? Do you really think you will be voted for the board of directors again if word gets out that this conflict was entirely your fault?”

Don’s face grew increasingly red with every word Castiel said. He obviously wasn’t used to people defying his authority like that.

“Well… but she… you don’t…”

Meg’s door opened and she rolled her chair outside, moving it to the side of the porch closest to the garage.

“Good morning, Don! Is there a problem here?”

Don eyed Castiel a little longer, with the glare of a rabid pit bull ready to jump at his throat. Castiel held his gaze, silent and calm.

“No problem,” Don said in the end, backing away from the fence. “It was nice to meet your friend, Meg.”

He retreated further into his garden. Castiel kept watching him and noticed that Sam was on the other side of the fence, standing on Don’s garden and staring at him with such anger it was amazing that the man didn’t notice it. What happened next was sort of inevitable. Sam stretched his leg, right in the way in of Don’s steps. Castiel half-expected him to go through the ghost, but the man tripped into it anyway. He let out a yelp and fell face first into the dirt.

“Oh, shit, you okay there?” Meg asked him.

“I’m fine!” Don screamed out as he stumbled back up. “Thank you for your concern.”

He walked away, leaving his rake abandoned on the lawn, even though there were still leaves spread around it. Castiel was sure that was a landscaping violation, but decided to save that quip for another occasion.

“Hope he wasn’t giving you trouble,” Meg said. “He’s one of the HOA’s hardasses.”

“Well… he tried, but I think we came to an understanding,” Castiel admitted.

Meg’s lips quivered into a smile.

“Alright, that’s good to know. How’s that going?”

“You’ll have your ramp in no time.”

He wasn’t joking. Now that the planks were cut, it was just a matter to placed them over the stairs. He didn’t even have to remove them or change them in anyway, so if Meg wanted to move from the house someday, it would be easy for her or the next owner to remove.

He could have told that to Don instead of threatening a lawsuit, but the guy had been so insufferable he didn’t deserve to know.

Meg came outside again while he was installing the poles that would hold the ramp up. She had a tray with two glasses full of lemonade.

“You thirsty?” she asked him as she offered him one.

Castiel wiped the sweat from his brown with his sleeve and stood up to receive the glass.

“Thank you. I haven’t even noticed I was until now,” he commented, taking a sip. It was delicious. Meg had added ginger and a leaf of mint to it. “You know when you’re so lost in your work you lose notion of the time or that you’re tired or hungry or anything else…?”

He went quiet. He was rambling again.

Meg didn’t call him out on it. She simply cradled her glass with her fingers and took a very slow sip.

“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. It’s like you’re in the zone and you don’t want anything to interrupt you. I’ve done some of my best paintings like that.”

“Oh,” Castiel mumbled. He knew this already, but of course, she couldn’t know that. “You paint?”

She froze halfway into taking the glass to her lips again. She closed her eyes and looked regretful for a moment, like she’d said something she hadn’t meant to.

“I… used to paint,” she said. “It was just a hobby of mine. Don’t really do it much anymore.”

“Bullshit!” Sam exclaimed from somewhere to his left. Castiel held on very tightly to his glass, trying with all his might not to let it fall down. “She majored in Art. Painting was her life. She even had a showing at a gallery once. I don’t know why she’s lying about this.”

“Why not?” Castiel asked, forcing himself to keep his eyes on her instead of the ghost.

“I don’t know, I just… haven’t really felt inspired anymore.”

Her tone was cagey and she was avoiding his gaze. Castiel changed the topic. He didn’t want to lose her trust when she’d just started opening up by probing into something she obviouly wasn't comfortable talking about.

“Well, you know what they say about inspiration. It has to find you working.”

“Yeah, and it’s not gonna do that if I keep distracting you,” Meg said. Castiel hadn’t finished his glass of lemonade yet, but when she stretched the tray towards him, he still felt compelled to set it back on it. “I’ll let you get back to it.”

“Okay. Thank you…” Castiel said, but Meg had already backed away into her home again, so he wasn’t sure if she heard him.

He installed some very basic handrails around the ramp that he would replace later for ones that looked more similar to the porch's designed and then tested them by leaning against them and pushing. He walked up and down the ramp a couple of times, trying to feel if any place was going to cave in.

“Is it ready?” Sam asked.

“Only one way to know.”

He knocked on the door.

“She’s on the phone,” Sam informed him. “Give it a second.”

After like a minute, Meg opened the door again. Castiel stepped aside so she could see the brand new ramp.

“Wanna give it a try? Tell me if it’s too steep or if you feel like it needs any other adjustments.”

“Holy shit,” Meg said, under her breath, as if this ugly plywood ramp was the most amazing thing she’d seen.

She rolled her chair up them and held onto the handrails with one hand as she moved her wheel with the other. She slid down to the garden path and then turned around and slid up once again, effortlessly.

“Holy shit!” she repeated, laughing. “Oh, my God, I should have done this ages ago.”

“Isn’t it much easier than going in and out through the garage?” Castiel asked.

“You were right,” Meg admitted. “You were absolutely right!”

She had a beautiful smile. Castiel had noticed before, of course, but now that she was smiling at him, his stomach made a strange flip as he noticed it again. It was a bit like watching a solar eclipse, humbling and blinding at the same time.

He forgot to breathe for a second or two and his heart was thumping on his chest so loud he completely failed to listen to what Meg was telling him now.

“Dude, pay attention!” Sam warned him.

“I’m sorry, what?” Castiel asked, blinking.

“How much do I owe you?” Meg repeated. “You know, for… everything.”

“Oh.” Castiel was so surprised that for a second or two, he didn’t know what to say. “I don’t… Meg, of course I don’t expect you to pay me.”

“Eh, that’s not gonna fly with her,” Sam said.

“Come on,” Meg insisted. “You came here, you worked all morning… I’m assuming all of these tools and materials came from your own pocket. You have to let me pay you back.”

Castiel opened his mouth to protest, but he noticed Sam shaking his head vigorously behind Meg’s shoulder.

“Tell you what,” Castiel said. “You can pay me the cost of the materials, but we’ll consider my time a gift to you.”

Sam nodded and gave him a thumbs up. That was apparently a good compromise.

Meg, however, still took a few seconds to ponder over it.

“At least let me buy you lunch,” she offered.

“You don’t have to do that…”

“Let me treat you,” she insisted. “You must be hungry.”

Castiel opened his mouth to say he was fine, but right at that moment, his belly roared loudly, completely defeating the point of what he was about to say.

“I guess I am a bit hungry.” He laughed and scratched the back of his neck.

“No, shit,” Meg said, but there was no malice in her voice. Just another one of those smiles that made his stomach do backflips. She took out her phone out of her pocket and started typing something. “So, what kind of tacos do you like?”

He ordered a veggie one and adjusted some things about the ramp while the delivery arrived. They sat outside on the deck overseeing backyard, which was even messier than the front lawn. It had overgrown weeds and grass, with a bunch of dead leaves rotting on the ground. Castiel wasn’t even sure they all came from the old oak tree Meg had planted there.

“Didn’t take you for a vegetarian,” Meg commented.

“I’m not, but I’ve had some health issues that I need to be mindful of.”

“Really? Because the other day you were just chomping down that sodium like there’s no tomorrow,” Sam protested.

“I like meat and I indulge now and then,” Castiel continued explaining, ignoring the ghost. “But I try to eat healthy.”

“I see,” Meg said and thankfully for him, she didn’t inquire any further. “Sam was a bit of a health freak.”

“You don’t say,” Castiel said. Luckily, Meg didn’t catch the sarcasm on his voice.

“Oh, yeah. We used to go to the farmer’s market, eat everything with veggies. He went out running every morning. I tried to go with him sometimes, but I didn’t have the discipline to get up at the ass crack of dawn and fucking exercise.” She stopped and thought about it for a moment while Castiel chuckled at her expression. “Maybe that’s why Don hates me now.”

“How come?” Castiel asked, failing to see the connection.

“Well, Sam used to take off his shirt while he was doing his morning run and Amelia, Don’s wife, used to be casually working on the garden right at the time he trotted back all cover in sweat. And not to brag, but he was in great shape.”

Castiel nodded. Even dead and annoying as he was, he had to admit that Sam was a very handsome guy.

“So, you’re saying… Don was jealous of Sam because his wife had a crush on him.”

“What? No!” Sam said. “Amelia was always just nice and Don was always a dick. It had nothing to do with me!”

“All the women in the damn neighborhood had a crush on him,” Meg continued, rolling her eyes. “Sam acted like he didn’t notice…”

“I never noticed!”

“… but I’m sure he was just feigning humility,” Meg said, with a chuckle. Sam, on his side, seemed very distressed.

“Was this something that bothered her?” he asked. “She never told me anything!”

“Did it bother you?” Castiel asked, point blank.

“Are you kidding me? I loved it,” Meg replied, with a grin. “There’s something to be said about being envied by a bunch of bored housewives, let me tell you.”

She laughed again, but Castiel thought it was less hearty than before. She looked down at her half-eaten taco and then sighed.

“It didn’t bother me,” she repeated. “Buy you know, Sam, he was… forget it, it’s stupid.”

Castiel wanted to assure her she could tell him anything and he wouldn’t think it was stupid, but at the same time, if this was something she hadn’t told Sam in life…

What were the ethical implications of having her talk like that when she didn’t know Sam was present and listening to everything she said? He hadn’t really wondered that before and now he felt slightly guilty. But he couldn’t just tell her Sam was there.

“What?” Sam asked regardless. “What was she going to say? Ask her!”

“Meg?” Castiel asked softly.

Meg blinked and the sadness in her face evaporated.

“It doesn’t matter. We were happy. That’s what’s important, right?”

“Yes,” Castiel said and offered her what he hoped was a comforting smile. “That’s what really matters.”


	11. Fall

“I think we need to establish some ground rules for this.”

Sam scoffed from the passenger seat. Why he needed to sit there, Castiel couldn’t fathom. Maybe for the same reason he was usually leaning against walls or sitting in chairs or counters. He had been a tall man in life and perhaps it was a remnant of that. Even though now he could walk through objects and all, he was still trying to appear a little less threatening.

“Yeah, the grounds rules are, you help Meg and through her, you help me.”

“I know that’s what the end goal is here,” Castiel said, trying to be patient. “But at the same time… maybe there are some things Meg didn’t want you to know while you were alive and I don’t know how I feel about you finding them out now.”

“What could she possible not want me to know?” Sam asked. “We shared everything.”

“Really? Everything?”

“Yes! Because that’s what being married is all about!”

Castiel slowed down the truck. The windshield had suddenly gone foggy and he was certain it wasn’t because the temperature outside had changed. He turned on the defroster.

“Why are you so angry about this?”

“I’m not,” Sam replied, but he had his arms crossed over his chest and was looking away from Castiel. “I just don’t want you talking alone with my wife, that’s all.”

“Are you worried I’m going to make a move on her or something?”

Sam remained quiet. They stopped at a red light and Castiel turned to look at him.

“That’s what this is, isn’t it?” he guessed. “You’re… jealous that I’m spending time with her?”

“You’re the one who said you had a crush on her!”

“I did say that,” Castiel admitted. “And I do feel that. But I want to be respectful of her. I know that she’s going through a lot and in a very vulnerable spot. I wouldn’t want to do anything that could… be perceived as me taking advantage of that. And besides, just because I feel this way, it doesn’t Meg does as well. If she wants me to be just her friend, then that’s what I will be.”

He felt like he needed to repeat those intentions out loud and he was actually lucky that Sam was there to hold him accountable to them. Because when Meg had smiled at him earlier, it really had been hard for him to remember he wasn’t supposed to feel anything of the sort for her.

Regardless, his words seemed to have calmed Sam down.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Okay. You… you’re a good guy, Cas.”

“I try to be,” Castiel replied.

“What I’m saying is, if some completely random stranger was going to see me after all this time, I’m glad it was you and not some run-of-the-mill asshole.”

“Like Don?”

A ghost laughing was a very strange occurrence. His radio started spouting out static and his car lights blinked on and off as Sam guffawed.

“Oh, no, can you imagine? He’d probably try to make this into some sort of HOA shit.”

“ _Hello, Meg. Your dead husband wants me to tell you to mow the lawn.”_

Sam chuckled some more, but then went quiet.

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” he said.

“Wait, really? You want me to fix the garden?” Castiel frowned.

“You’re going to paint the ramp and be done with it next week, right?” Sam reminded him. “You’re going to need an excuse to keep seeing Meg and this could be it. Plus, if the garden and the backyard are fixed, it would get Don off of her back for a while.”

“Okay,” Castiel sighed. “I’ll bring it up to her.”

There was silence for so long that Castiel half-expected Sam to not be there when he turned again. But the ghost still remained.

“I… thank you,” he said. “I know this is all very weird, but…”

“It’s no trouble,” Castiel assured him.

Sam smiled at him and in the next blink of the eye, he was gone.

* * *

Meg seemed reluctant at first when he brought up the idea of working on the garden.

“I really don’t know, Cas. You’ve done a lot already.”

“Meg, I don’t mind.”

The argument that seemed to convince her was that it would make Don stop showing up at her door with fines from the HOA.

“I can’t believe they actually charge you with those.”

“I don’t mind paying them. What I mind is that they won’t leave me alone,” Meg groaned.

Castiel glanced at her, nervous. He didn’t know how to ask the next thing he was going to ask. It really felt like it was none of his business, but maybe this was part of taking care of her, but the question was very personal and…

“Don’t they… don’t they care that you work for a call center?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m actually rich,” Meg said, with a shrug.

It didn’t sound like she was joking, which was the most baffling part of that. Castiel stared at her, blinking.

“Well, not rich-rich,” Meg explained. “But it turns out that when a trucker falls asleep at the wheel and kills your husband, the company they worked for offers you a lot of money so you won’t sue them. My lawyer said we could get them to shell out even more, but I just… I didn’t want to drag all of that longer than I needed to.”

“Oh,” Castiel said. He could imagine exactly what she was talking about. “And what did you…?”

“Most of it went to the house’s mortgage and medical expenses,” she said, patting her wheelchair. “I tried to give some to Sam’s mom and brother, but they wouldn’t have it. And now the money is just… sitting there on my bank account, doing nothing.”

“I don’t understand,” Castiel said, frowning. “If you have money, why do you work at a call center?”

Meg reflected on this for a moment.

“I guess to have something to do.”

Her bus arrived at that moment, so Castiel didn’t really have to ask her why she didn’t do anything else, then. Like travel. Or start a foundation. Or go back to school. Really, anything that could keep her mind occupied, anything other than endure abuse from angry travelers, day in and day out.

But he sort of already knew the answer. Meg was frozen. She simply couldn’t do anything besides surviving, she couldn’t think of anything besides her own pain. It was tragic, in a way.

It took him another week to convince her to let him come over and work on the garden. During that time, they didn’t just see each other at the therapy group sessions, but they texted and called each other as well. Castiel called her once to see how the ramp was working out for her and to know if Don was giving her any grief over it (he was, but Meg didn’t sound too bothered by it) and Meg called him again to tell him how there were a bunch of kids at her door that wouldn’t leave.

“I don’t know what the hell they want. I’m just sitting up here in my room and I’m not going down to answer the damn door.”

“Meg, it’s Halloween. They’re probably trick-or-treaters.”

“Oh,” Meg said, and then, a little louder. “ _Oh_.”

“You forgot it was Halloween?”

“Well, what do you want from me?” she complained. “The decorations are in the basement and I haven’t been down there in three years. For all I know, there’s a crazy lady living there now. It would certainly explain all of the strange shit that keeps happening around this house.”

Castiel laughed and had to resist the urge to ask Sam if he was there somewhere. Because the strange occurrences were certainly his fault, but of course Castiel couldn’t tell Meg that.

“Why are they knocking on your door if you don’t have decorations up?”

“The block’s housewives probably think they’re doing me a favor by forcing human contact on me. Every month or so one of them brings me a casserole and reminds me there’s a potluck happening that weekend. I think they just like to check on whether I’m alive or not.”

“Or they’re just being nice to you.”

“Well, I was always a bit of a dick to them whenever Sam asked me to interact with them, so I don’t know why they would do that.”

“Perhaps they feel guilty because they all had a crush on your husband.”

It was Meg’s turn to laugh and Castiel was happy to hear that sound. He was certain she hadn’t just called to complain about the kids knocking on her door. Maybe she just… felt lonely.

Fall was a very lonely time of the year, at least to him. Not because of anything changing in his routine, but because fall always made him think of Jack’s absence in his life.

“He seemed like he was a very good kid.”

Castiel didn’t even get startled anymore at Sam just showing up whenever in his home. This time, he had been drinking some chocolate and looking over his photo albums. Many of them were pictures of Jack growing up.

“He was,” Castiel replied, turning on another page.

“How come you ended up taking care of him?”

Castiel turned to him.

“Is there any reason you’re here?”

Sam shrugged.

“Meg is working and I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Sam explained, as if it was obvious. “So, you want to do anything? Watch a movie or something…?”

“You’re a ghost. You could sneak into a movie theater and watch any movie you like,” Castiel pointed out.

“It’s not the same if you don’t go with someone. And if you can’t have popcorn or… oh, I see what you’re doing,” Sam said.

Castiel closed the photo album and walked away.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Of course, Sam was already in his kitchen when he walked in there.

“Hey, man, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine,” Sam assured him. “I was just trying to make conversation.”

“Well, that’s not a conversation I’m interested in having,” Castiel said.

“Sorry. I’ll get out of your hair.”

And amazingly, he did. Castiel ended up feeling a little bad about it later that night. In a strange way he felt like it wasn’t just Meg that he was becoming closer with.

Sam was very particular about the garden.

“No, you’re not supposed to cut those!” he protested every time Castiel got closed to any plant with the gardening scissors. “You have to just nip them a little bit. And don’t throw away the leaves! You can make compost with them! And don’t forget to trim that branch. Don’s been complaining about it for years… what?” he asked when Castiel stopped working to glare directly at him.

“You’re an unbearable nuisance,” he declared.

“And you’re a terrible gardener!” Sam complained, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Of course I’m a terrible gardener, because I am not a gardener. I’m a carpenter. I’m doing what I can and you need to get off my back.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Castiel startled and turned to see Meg on the deck, with a tray of lemonade once again.

“No one,” Castiel said and he hoped she didn’t think it was weird. It definitely looked a little bit weird, but he tried smoothing it over with a smile. “I was giving myself a pep talk. I’m really not great at this. Thank you.”

He took off the gardening gloves and sat with her to enjoy the lemonade. He really needed to ask her for the recipe, but at the same time, he kind of didn’t want to do it. It was Meg’s lemonade, a treat he had when he went to her house, and he enjoyed it with her. Somehow making himself more of it at home would be cheapening this pauses in the work where he could enjoy her company, making them less special.

Balthazar would’ve mocked him so much if he knew what Castiel was thinking at that moment.

“Well, I think you’re doing a good job,” Meg told him. “It looks like Don’s going to have less excuses to harass me this month, so thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Castiel said, though what he was really thinking was that it wasn’t fair that Don was harassing her for any reason to begin with.

“Are you going to come next week to finish here?”

“I’m going to be out of town,” he said. “It’s… Thanksgiving.”

“Oh,” Meg repeated and blinked, like she’d forgot about it. “Oh, right. That.”

Castiel slowly turned to look at her.

“You… are you spending it with someone in particular…?” he asked.

“No, not really. My dad’s dead and I don’t talk to my brother.”

Sam had mentioned something about it. Meg had also been quiet those last few sessions on the group therapy, when everyone was discussing their plans for the holiday and how it just wasn’t going to be the same without their loved ones there.

“Why not?”

“It’s kind of a funny story,” Meg said. “He shot me.”

“What?” Castiel asked.

“What?!” Sam asked at the exact same time.

“He was high at the time,” Meg explained, with a grimace. “He was high all of the time back then. I made the mistake of lending him some money that really could have gone into paying my tuition and of course, I should have known I was never going to see a cent of it again. But I was stupid, so I went to his apartment to ask for it. He was freaking out and completely paranoid. He thought I had brought the cops with me and he shot me. His hands were shaking like crazy, so the bullet barely grazed me, though.”

“Meg…” Castiel said, opening his eyes wide. “That’s not a funny story!”

“No, but your reaction to it is hilarious!” she said, and she started laughing so loudly he had to wonder if it was some sort of defense mechanism.

Sam, on his part, was horrified.

“She never told me any of this!” he exclaimed. “Why did she never tell me…?”

“You know, I never told Sam about this,” Meg said, when she was done laughing. “I went to the ER by myself and when he asked how’d it gone afterwards, I just told him Tom and me were not in speaking terms anymore.”

“She could have called me!”

“We weren’t even dating at that point,” Meg said. “Well, you know, our relationship was so on and off that it felt like we were dating even when we were seeing other people. But still, I’m sure his girlfriend at the time wouldn’t have appreciated to get a call at two in the morning from his former friend with benefits to tell him about the trashy drama she’d got into because of her junkie brother.”

“It wasn’t trashy,” Sam said, shaking his head. “I never would’ve said anything like that. She didn’t have to go through that alone!”

Castiel felt his head was spinning a little. Maybe Sam being so upset about this was getting to him somehow or maybe just so casually mentioning what a mess of a person her brother was had struck something with him, because…

“My brother Luc is in jail,” he blurted out all of the sudden. “Jack’s father, he… won’t be out until he’s a very old man. He did some awful stuff. So I understand why you wouldn’t want to mention that sort of thing to people.”

“Woah,” Meg said, moving back in her chair. “To be honest with you, I don’t know where Tom is now. He could be in jail. He could be dead. He could’ve cleaned up his act and be happy living in a place with a HOA with a wife and three nephews I don’t know about.”

“Do you really think that?”

“No, not at all.” Meg grabbed her glass of lemonade and took a sip. “It’s fun to imagine, though.”

They made a pause. Those confessions have been so charged that Castiel wasn’t sure how to continue the conversation now.

“So… was that why you ended up taking care of Jack?” Meg asked. “Because your brother went to jail? I’m sorry if that question’s too personal. You don’t have to answer it,” she added quickly.

“No, it’s fine,” Castiel assured her. “Luc actually wasn’t in the picture at the time Jack was born and my sister-in-law, Kelly, she… she thought I would be the best person to take care of him when she was gone.”

That was an approximation to the truth of what had happened.

“Was she sick too?” Meg asked.

“In a way,” Castiel said and hope she would leave it like that. “Anyway, Luc came back years later to reclaim his son, but he was a complete stranger to Jack at that point and like I said, he had done some… unsavory things, so I had no trouble retaining Jack’s custody. Luc went to jail soon after, but it was disturbing in the meantime, because he would show up drunk in the middle of the night, wake Jack up, try to destroy my things. It was a mess.” He stopped to think about it for a second. “He never shot me, though. He might have tried to stab me.”

Meg didn’t react with horror to that story. She laughed again and lifted her glass.

“To horrible siblings!”

It was a bit of a morbid toast, but Castiel was beginning to understand that was just Meg’s brand of sense of humor.

“So, I understand you didn’t want to tell Sam at the time,” Castiel continued, because the ghost was eyeing him angrily and of course, he wasn’t going to let that go. “But why didn’t you tell him later?”

“Maybe I should have,” Meg admitted, after thinking about it for a few seconds. “You know, right when it happened, I was hurt and angry with Tom. Then I just thought he didn’t deserve any attention or energy on my part, so I didn’t want to waste any on it, not even to tell Sam. But mostly, I just… I didn’t think Sam would’ve understood.”

“Of course I would’ve understood!” Sam protested. “She should have told me; I would have helped her. I would have helped Tom, too!”

“He always had a great relationship with _his_ brother,” Meg went on. “Dean was his hero, his best friend, so that was his frame of reference. They never had a fight like Tom and I used to have. Many times, before I cut him off for good, Sam told me that I should try to have a good relationship with him, that he was family, blah, blah, blah.” She sighed. “It was one of the great things about him, you know? That he would give people so many chances, he was so forgiving… he probably thought he could have helped Tom somehow.”

“You think so?” Castiel asked, eyeing the ghost, who scoffed again.

“I _know_ so. And as great as Sam’s intentions regarding this were, I just wasn’t ready for that sort of forgiving and forgetting act. I would have told Sam, if I ever did feel ready, for sure, but before that, I just… I just needed him to _not_ know, you get what I mean?”

“Yes.” Castiel nodded. “Of course I know what you mean. Jack eventually got curious about what kind of person his dad was, about meeting him and talking to him. I didn’t want to expose him to that, because I didn’t trust Luc not to hurt him, but he kept insisting and… well, he had a right to know. So I took him to see Luc in jail and it was not good. It was not fun for anyone involved. He didn’t even want to talk about Luc again until his illness took a turn for the worst.”

Meg nodded. She leaned her head on her open hand, pensively.

“It’s funny, you know?” she commented. “How death makes you reconsider so many things. I did think about getting back in touch with Tom after Sam passed away, but the thing is, I was a mess at that time and if Tom was still a piece of shit, he would have not hesitated to use that to get some sort of advantage over me.”

“You needed to protect yourself. I understand that.”

She tapped the armrest of her chair with her fingers.

“I think maybe we should be talking about all of this with Billie and the group,” she commented, with a nervous laughter.

“I’m sure you could bring it up there, if you wanted to,” Castiel said. “And I’m sure Billie would give us some amazing advice, if that was what we were looking for. But sometimes it’s not the advice we could receive talking about these things. Sometimes… you just need to vent.”

“Who do you vent to?”

“My psychiatrist, mostly.”

The revelation that he had a psychiatrist seemed to take Meg by surprise.

“Oh.”

“Why is that surprising?”

“I don’t know.” Meg shrugged. “It just looks like you have such a good handle on… everything.”

“I absolutely do not,” Castiel said and the idea that he had a handle on anything made him chuckle. “If it even appears that I do, it’s because I’ve reached out and got help for many years. If you’ve met me right after Jack died, you wouldn’t have thought that was the case.”

“Yeah, but that’s natural, to be upset right after someone you care about dies,” Meg argued. She gesticulated as she spoke, like she was having trying articulating her point. “What’s weird is to be so… stuck.”

She lowered her hands at the same time. She wasn’t looking at Castiel anymore, but she had a troubled expression up on her face.

Castiel stretched his hand and touched her forearm.

“It’s not weird,” he assured her. “What Billie said, about how we all grieve in different timeframes and there’s not a deadline for when to be okay? Those are not just words she says because they sound good. They’re the truth.”

“Billie would never say anything just because it sounds good.”

“Absolutely not. That woman is way too honest about everything.”

Meg snorted out a laugh. The tension in her shoulders relaxed a little and Castiel figured that would be a good time to move back in his chair, to stop touching her if that made her in any way uncomfortable.

But then she placed her hand above his and smiled. His insides immediately felt like they were becoming liquid.

“Thank you, though. For letting me vent to you,” she said.

“You’re… very welcome,” Castiel stuttered.

Because he could never get his words to come out right when Meg was looking like that at him. He couldn’t even get his thoughts to be straight when she was that close. An elephant might have walked past the garden and he wouldn’t have noticed, because he was too busy staring into her sweet brown eyes, at the smirk on her lips, taking in the warmth of her touch…

Meg moved her hand away and the enchantment broke. Castiel sat back, suppressing a sigh of relief.

He didn’t want to think about what he felt whenever he was around Meg. He had made a promise to himself and to Sam and that was that.

It was hard to get a grip on himself sometimes, but he tried to. This stupid crush was bound to go away eventually, right?

“So… what are your plans for Thanksgiving?”

“Absolutely none. I hate turkey and I hate people,” she declared. “I’m going to stay home with a book or a movie or something.”

“Dean is having a big Thanksgiving dinner at his home. All of my cousins are going to go,” Sam intervened. “He didn’t invite her?”

Castiel did something that he was aware might bring the ire of the ghost on him, but he felt it was the right thing to do.

“I think that is an excellent plan. Thanksgiving is overrated. I’m only going because my sister Anna would get angry if I didn’t.”

“Make up an excuse and stay home,” she said. “Play hookie. Who cares.”

“People care!” Sam protested, scandalized. “You cannot just isolate yourself because you don’t like the holiday!”

“I wish I could,” Castiel said, laughing, though he didn’t know if at Sam getting so worked up over this or at the mere suggestion that he could skip Thanksgiving dinner so easily. “But I would never hear the end of it.”

Meg booed him and called him a square, which was such a juvenile thing that he couldn’t help but to laugh about it.

It was a beautiful autumn day and he was glad he could share it with Meg.


	12. Condolences

Thanksgiving was extremely unremarkable and that was the way Meg wanted it to be. She could practically hear what Sam would say about her staying home and not interacting with people, but she couldn’t have cared less.

The one thing she wished is that it had felt different from everything she did every other day, which was stay home and feel slightly bad, sometimes work and feel slightly bad. She hadn’t realized how much she’d started wanting Castiel to come visit her and work on something that she couldn’t fix in her home. His presence made the days feel special, different from one another.

Was she pathetic for thinking so? She hoped there could be someone she could ask about it, but who would that be? Bess Fitzgerald, who showed up the following day with two plastic containers, one filled with turkey soup and the other with turkey sandwiches?

“I hope you do enjoy them,” she told her, with a wide smile in her round face. “It’s an old family recipe!”

“Woah, thanks,” Meg said, hoping that would be all, but no.

Bess invited herself inside and sat on her living room for an hour, talking about her husband Garth, the dentist convention he was going to the next week, and how hard it was to be the mom of a young girl, but how she was “so blessed” by her. Meg had to bite her tongue to ask where the hell was her “blessing” right at that moment and why Bess wasn’t taking care of her instead of hassling her, but she figured that would’ve been rude.

“And how are you doing, Meg?” she asked, in that sweet tone of voice that indicated she was hoping Meg would confide her struggles and pains to her so she would have something to tell the other wives in the next potluck, whenever that might be.

“I’m great, thanks,” Meg said. Something about her fake cheery tone might have alerted Bess that she wasn’t being completely honest, though.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I know the time around the holidays is always hard for me. It reminds me of my mom and how she isn’t with us anymore. It’s always a bittersweet feeling, because while you get to spend time with your loved ones, you also remember those we’ve lost.”

“Well, you know… I mostly try not to think about it,” Meg said, with a shrug.

Denial apparently also wasn’t a healthy response to what Bess was suggesting.

“I understand. You must miss Sam very much,” she said, point blank. “But if it’s any consolation, I do believe he is in a better place.”

“Do you now?” Meg asked. Bess ignored the sarcasm in her tone and changed the subject.

“Someone told me that you’ve had a… friend coming over every weekend.”

Meg grimaced. Well, of course, what did she expect? There wasn’t much else for people to do around there than to snoop on everyone else’s business.

“Cas has been helping me with some things around the house,” Meg said, shrugging. She immediately regretted saying even that much. It was really no one’s business and she knew that it would get out immediately by Sunday when Bess told everyone at the church.

Bess’ face showed no sign of emotions at finding this out.

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re getting things straightened out around here. I know some folks at the association might not have been very patient with you, but I’ve kept telling them to give you time.”

“Really?”

Bess sighed and looked around, as if she feared there was someone else in the room that could hear what she was about to say.

“You know, Don Richardson… he’s not a very patient or mindful person.”

From someone like Bess, she might have as well been calling him a dick. Meg didn’t expect this to suddenly become Mean Christian Girls Club, but she was impressed that Bess had even admitted as much.

“Tell me about it.”

“And he has a very strong personality, so people are easily swayed into his way of seeing things,” Bess continued. “It helps keep the HOA meetings from turning into a battlefield, but at the same time, they can get quite intransigent.”

“Is that so?” Meg asked. She hadn’t participated in a fucking HOA meeting since before Sam died, but from what he remembered of them, they were a breeding ground of passive-aggressiveness rivalries.

“This year, for example, he suggested fining people who _don’t_ put up Christmas decorations.”

Meg had to take a second to assimilate the craziness of what Bess was saying.

“What?”

“I said the same thing!” Bess said. “What about the people who don’t celebrate Christmas, for whatever reason? He simply said _‘Well, they can put Hanukah decorations, then, as long as they put something up’_.”

“Why the hell is he asking that for?”

“The reasoning was that the neighborhood has to look appropriately festive,” Bess said. “Apparently, kids were very disappointed this Halloween because some people didn’t put up decorations and wouldn’t give them candy.”

Meg stared blankly at Bess and wondered if it would too petty of her to point out that Don meant her, specifically. Why the hell did he care anyway that “the kids” had been disappointed? Him and Amelia didn’t even have any, as far as she was aware.

“Anyway, the association hasn’t voted on it, yet, but I’m guessing they will next week,” Bess continued. “Things will likely go the way Don wants them to.”

“What am I supposed to do, though?” Meg asked, angrily. “Wrap fairy lights around my chair and sit outside waiting for Santa?”

Bess cringed. It was like she hadn’t even thought about it before.

“Well… if you have trouble with it, of course Garth and I will be happy to come and help you.”

After she left, Meg spent about another hour being angry as hell about it, but then it occurred to her… that was the perfect excuse to call Castiel.

* * *

“I could never live in a place with a HOA. They seem extremely controlling.”

Meg laughed from the top of the stairs that lead to the basement.

“That has to be the understatement of the century.”

Castiel rummaged through the boxes piled up around him. According to Meg, she had no idea what the box with Christmas decorations even looked like. According to Sam, however, it was literally just a box with “Christmas décor” scribbled up on the side.

“I literally left it here the last Christmas I was alive,” he insisted. “It has to be around here somewhere.”

Castiel was sure it would have been easier to look around if the light bulb hadn’t died ages ago and he wouldn’t have to rely on his cellphone light. To make matters worse, the place was incredibly dusty and he had to stop every few minutes to sneeze.

“Are you sure it’s in here?” he asked, not certain who he meant anymore.

“I’m pretty sure…”

“Wait.” Sam stopped looking around for a second and hit his head. “I’m an idiot. They’re in the closet under the stairs.”

Castiel pretended to rummage around a little longer before he looked up to where Meg was sitting.

“Well, I can’t find them,” he said, coming up. “Is there any other place they could be? A closet somewhere?”

“No, I don’t…” she started, but interrupted herself. “No, he wouldn’t have…?”

She rolled back and Castiel followed her towards the stairs.

Sure enough, the first thing the saw when opening the closet door was a box with “Christmas décor” on the side.

“No way,” she said, shaking her head. “Sam put it in the basement, I’m sure!”

Castiel wondered if that was right. Sam could move small things around, but doing so apparently tired him. How long ago had he moved the Chrismtas box there? And how much energy had it cost him? He glanced at him, but the only explanation he got was a smug grin and a shrug.

“Guess I must have remembered it wrong.”

Meg leaned down, grabbed the box and placed it over her lap. She was about to back down when Castiel noticed something behind it.

“Wait, are those your paintings?”

Meg winced.

“I guess they must be.”

“Can I see them?”

Meg’s hands got tighter around the box. She hesitated.

“I mean… yeah, sure,” she agreed in the end.

Castiel pulled out three framed canvasses. Some of them were big enough he wasn’t sure how she’d managed to store them in such a cramped space, but there they were. One of them was an oil painting of a fat, white cat sleeping on a window’s ledge, with the blue sky behind it. The second was a snowy landscape, with small, pretty pine trees popping up from the blinding white. The third one, and what immediately became Castiel’s favorite, appeared to be just vivid splashes of color over a black background, but when looking at it more closely, he noticed it was a woman’s face. Meg’s face.

“Meg, these are… these are amazing!” he exclaimed. “I really love them.”

Meg’s reaction was strange. She was always so confident and so ready to joke, but now she seemed… shrunken. And she let out a sigh when Castiel said that, as if she wasn’t sure what he would actually say.

“Yeah?” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “These old things?”

“Why did you put them away?”

“I don’t know. We used to have them around… Sam liked that one,” she said, pointing at the same self-portrait that Castiel had immediately loved. “After a while, I figured… it was a little conceited to have a picture of my own face hanging in the dining room.”

“I guess I can see that,” Cas agreed. “And this one?”

A smile appeared on Meg’s lips.

“That was Machiavelli. He was the laziest cat in the entire world. When I tell you he didn’t even move in the three hours that took me to paint that…”

“And this one?”

Meg bit the inside of her cheek for a moment before answering:

“That was a ski resort in Vermont. I painted it during our honeymoon.”

“Oh,” Castiel said. He looked over shoulder again and Sam just offered another shrug.

“I think she should put them back up. They’re some of her best works.”

Castiel considered this carefully. On the one hand, he agreed with Sam that they were very beautiful paintings and it was a shame they were under the stairs collecting dust. On the other…

“I understand. They were painful to look at.”

“Yeah.” Meg sighed. “I just… I took them down and I told myself that I was going to paint new ones to replace them. And then I never did.”

There were more paintings inside, but Castiel gathered the ones he’d pulled out and started putting them back inside.

Sam didn’t like that.

“Wait, what are you doing? She needs to see them! Cas!”

“I think you should look at them when you’re ready to do so,” he said, ignoring the ghost’s screaming. “But I do like them. And I think you’re very talented.”

Sam scoffed, clearly offended, but Meg simply nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. She had never looked this inhibited before, not even in the early days of her coming to the support group.

So Castiel smiled and changed the topic.

“Should we put the decorations up?”

“Oh, my God, this is such bullshit!” Meg complained. “It isn’t even snowing!”

Castiel wanted to point out that, despite this, her neighbors had already put up lights and Christmas trees in their gardens. The entire block looked rather festive to him when he was driving past them.

“It’s really ridiculous. You don’t have to go up there if you don’t want to,” Meg told him, but Castiel was already placing the stairs in position.

“It’s no trouble, Meg,” Castiel assured her as he climbed up to the roof.

Well, that might have been a bit too generous to say. It was cold already and it didn’t help that there was a ghost hovering over him, with his arms crossed and looking mighty pissed.

“What was that?” Sam wanted to know. “You were supposed to encourage her to take up painting again!”

Castiel looked over his shoulder. Meg had parked her wheelchair outside and she was looking up at him, shivering slightly in her inappropriately light leather jacket. She had a turtle neck sweater underneath, but it was still too chilly for just that. He wasn’t about to question her fashion choices, though. She looked cute.

He started hanging the lights, with his head turned away from her so she wouldn’t see him move his lips.

“It’s a process, Sam,” he said, in a voice low enough so that she wouldn’t hear it.

“Yeah, and you’re not making any progress in that front,” Sam said. “Move that slightly to the left.”

Castiel obeyed him.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to paint anymore, have you considered that?” he suggested. “Maybe she wants to take up a different hobby.”

“No way. I told you, man, this wasn’t just a hobby. This was her passion, what she wanted to do for a living.”

“How’s it going up there?”

Castiel looked down to see that Don was standing next to the fence again, in a sweater and holding a mug of coffee or chocolate in his hand.

“Hello, Don,” Meg said, rolling up closer to him. “Do you mind not distracting my friend? He was kind enough to show up to help me put up these things.”

Don gave her a very weird look. He narrowed his eyes towards her and twisted his mouth, like he was irritated by her.

Castiel had to suppress the urge to jump from the roof and fistfight the guy.

“Yes, your friend seems very kind,” Don answered. He clearly had not forgiven Castiel for their last encounter. “I’m glad you’re adhering to the HOA’s guidelines regarding this. Glad _and_ surprised.”

“I bet you would be even more surprised if by some miracle I would’ve miraculously stood up and hanged my own lights, right?”

Her sarcasm was so sharp that Castiel half expected to see Don start to bleed from somewhere.

“Hey, you know, any one of us would’ve been more than happy to do that for you,” Don said, shrugging. “We’re not insensitive to your struggles, but you do live in a society. You can’t be expected to be given special treatment every single time.”

“Do you think if I throw a tile from here, it would kill him?” Castiel asked.

“Probably, but then the roof might start leaking,” Sam pointed out.

“No, of course not,” Meg said, clearly annoyed. “Why would I expect that? Lucky me to have enough money to pay for all your stupid and petty fines.”

“I have told you, time and again, these regulations are necessary to keep the properties values up,” Don said. He was starting to sound annoyed. “You would be extremely selfish to ignore…”

Meg let a huge, exaggerated yawn, stretching her arms over her head as she did.

“I’m sorry, I’m sure whatever you’re saying is super interesting.” She rolled her eyes. “But I have to go do… literally anything else right now.”

“There’s no need to be rude!” Don shouted as Meg turned around and started moving away from the fence. “I really don’t appreciate your attitude, Meg!”

“And I really don’t appreciate you being a dick all over the fence, but what are we gonna do?” Meg replied. “We live in a society and while I’m not insensitive to your general dickishness, you can’t expect people to be polite to you every single time.”

Castiel didn’t bother to suppress his laughter. Don huffed and turned around to leave. Sam was on the other side of the fence again. Castiel was half-expecting him to trip Don again, but this time, he hit Don’s elbow, making him spill his beverage all over his sweater. Don let out a scream of surprise and then a growl of frustration as he hurried towards his home.

Castiel snickered and Meg looked up at the roof, with a smile.

“Life comes at you fast, I guess.”

The lights couldn’t shine very bright in the daylight, but they still looked neat, according to Meg.

“Hopefully that’ll be enough for them,” she said, with a sigh.

“You’re not going to put up a Christmas tree inside…?”

“Hey, they’re already forcing this bullshit on the outside of my house,” she pointed. “No way I’m gonna tolerate it inside.”

Castiel wondered if there was some sort of metaphor there, but he couldn’t really think about it. His ideas were always in disarray when he was around her, especially when she smiled at him like that.

“Want to come in for a drink? I’ve got… coffee.”

“I think maybe hot cocoa would be better at this time of the year,” he joked. “But coffee is fine.”

Meg rejected his help to handle the coffee maker, stating he had done enough for her already.

“What you could do is bring me the mugs,” she said as she moved past him towards the kitchen.

Castiel looked around and noticed a green mug on the edge of the coffee table. He picked up, thinking maybe he could wash it and use it without…

“Not that one!” Meg screamed at him when he walked into the kitchen. Castiel startled.

“That’s mine,” Sam explained behind him.

How could it be his…?

“Please, put that back,” Meg said, cringing.

“Very well,” Castiel said, placing it back exactly where it was. “Sorry.”

Meg didn’t answer. She just retreated further into the kitchen.

Castiel stayed where he was standing in the middle of the living room, with the queasy feeling that he had done something wrong growing. Sam sat on the couch’s armrest, staring at him with a mixture of pity and annoyance.

“I didn’t mean to…” Castiel started.

“Don’t tell that to me.”

He was right, of course. Castiel still didn’t quite understand what he’d done, but he still went into the kitchen.

Meg didn’t hear him come in. She had her arms on the counter and had buried her face in her arms, almost like she was about to cry. Castiel was tempted to back down into the living room, but then she raised her head, saw him and gave him an uneasy smile.

“Sorry I freaked out on you,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he stated at the exact same time.

They both went and stared at each other, an awkward silence falling between the two. Then, luckily for him, Meg threw her head back and laughed. It didn’t sound natural. More like she was doing it to make the moment pass as quickly as possible.

“Doesn’t matter. How do you like your coffee?”

They both drank it black and with very little sugar. The sun was falling, so it was too cold to sit on the backyard deck like they’d done so many times before. They sat on the living room instead, with Cas on the couch and Meg’s chair parked across from him, with the coffee table in the middle.

The green mug laid in between them, like an unsalvageable wall.

Despite that, the good mood returned easily. Castiel told her about his Thanksgiving and Meg had collected a lot of anecdotes from her work. People freaked out a lot while travelling during the holidays and of course, she was the only one on call because basically everyone else was celebrating with their families.

“Why do you keep that job?” Castiel asked her, after Meg confided him she had a terrible headache over the last client that had screamed at her.

“I told you. It’s something to do.”

“But you don’t have to do it if it makes you miserable.”

Meg let out a skeptic laughter and sipped from her mug. It was clear she was thinking what to answer to him.

“I mean… yeah, but what else could I do?”

The answer was obvious enough that Castiel hoped that he didn’t have to say it out loud.

“No, come on,” Meg complained. “I haven’t done that in ages. The muscles on my hands are probably going to be all messed up.”

“Perhaps,” Castiel conceded. “But I’m sure it’ll come back with practice. Like riding a bike.”

“I can’t do that either,” Meg reminded him.

Castiel stared at her, unsure, but he relaxed when he saw that she was laughing. It didn’t sound as forced as before either.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I couldn’t even ride a bike before the accident.”

“True.” Sam sighed. “I tried to teach her, but she always hated exercise.”

“I always hated exercise,” Meg said at the exact same time. “It drove Sam up the wall.”

Castiel smiled, but he couldn’t push away the uncomfortableness. He didn’t know why. He’d sat in that house, listening to Sam’s one-sided comments and Meg’s anecdotes over and over, at least once a week for the last two and a half months.

And he’d never before felt this… excluded by the two of them.

Did Sam feel like this all the time?

They finished the coffee when it was already dark outside.

“I should get going,” Castiel said.

“Okay.”

He was on the doorway when Sam stood right in front of him, blocking his way. Well, not really, because it wouldn’t be the first time that Castiel walk through him, but it was obvious he had something to say.

“Dude, the invitation!” he reminded him.

“Oh. Right.”

“What is it?” Meg asked as Castiel turned towards her.

“I’m having a little get together on Christmas,” he told her. “I was wondering if maybe… you don’t have to, of course. But if you would like to come…”

Meg cringed visibly.

“When you say a little get together…?”

“I mean like four or five people, tops,” he promised her. “It’s nothing fancy, no big families or children, nothing like that. Just a dinner for me, my two siblings and my friend Balthazar. He might bring a plus one, but that’s about it.”

Meg hesitated. She’d told him she despised Sam’s dinner parties and all the obligatory gatherings she had to go to because of the firm, but of course, this was a very different thing.

“You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. I just thought… you already spent Thanksgiving alone…”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You don’t have to bring gifts either.”

“I’ll think about it,” Meg repeated.

And that was about as much as he could ask from her. Castiel stepped outside, without any ghost getting in his way this time.

He had made his way towards the fence when he heard Meg calling his name. He turned around in time to see her push the button that would turn on all of the lights. Her roof lit up with a soft, beautiful golden light.

“Looks good!” she said. “Thank you, Clarence!”

She looked happy. Despite how much she had protested and called Don an asshole, she seemed genuinely elated about how her house look.

“Who’s Clarence?” he asked.

She shook her head and laughed like it was a joke and he wasn’t getting the punchline. She waved at him and Castiel interpreted that was his cue to leave.

“You did good,” Sam assured him once they were inside of the car. “You really did. Meg is a complete Grinch when it comes to these things, so I don’t know if she’ll come to your party. But at least she knows she has an option if she doesn’t want to call Dean.”

“Yes, about that. She hasn’t really… wanted to talk about your brother.”

“No, I guess not,” Sam said. He looked slightly frustrated. “I still don’t know what happened.”

“Maybe we should find out?” Castiel suggested.

“Maybe,” Sam agreed. “But the priority right now should be getting Meg to a better place.”

“I think she’s getting there. Slowly…”

Castiel’s voice trailed off. He’d just remembered the anguish expression in her face when he’d picked up the green mug.

“Maybe she needs additional help. I mean, more than what the group and I can provide,” Castiel said.

“She’s never going to go to a shrink,” Sam said. “So I don’t know how the hell you could convince her of that.”

“Billie has a private practice specialized in grief counseling,” Castiel pointed out. “Meg already knows her and likes her well enough.”

“Perhaps,” Sam said.

He sounded hesitant. Castiel parked in front of his own house and turned towards him.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Sam said, but for a ghost, he was a very bad liar.

“What’s bothering you?” Castiel insisted.

Sam ran his hands through his hair, another one of those little gestures that he’d probably kept from where he was alive even though they made no sense for him now.

“I’m just thinking about all the… painting thing,” he said. “Maybe you’re right and she just doesn’t want to do it anymore. Not like before, at least. And… I’ve had this idea of Meg in my head, right? Remember what I told you when I first asked you to help her?”

“That she was a shadow of her former self?”

“Exactly. I want her to be like she was before,” Sam said. “I want her to her to go back to who she was. But the more I listen to her speak and see her now, the more you’re helping her come out of her shell… I’m just… what if I don’t know who this Meg is? What if what happened changed more than just her body?”

Castiel reflected on this.

“Do you want me to lie to you?”

“Why would I want that?” Sam frowned.

“Because the truth might upset you,” Castiel warned him. Sam kept looking at him with the same interrogating look as before. “I think you’re right. I think the Meg that’s trying to make her way back from everything that happened might not be the same one you knew and loved. You can’t just go through something like that and not change, Sam. I know I haven’t been the same since losing Jack. It would surprise me a lot if the Meg from three years ago saw herself now and recognized her as the same person.”

Sam stared at him in silence for a while.

“You’re right, that is upsetting to think.”

“But it’s not a bad thing,” Castiel continued. “Change is… it’s important, it’s good. It means you’re alive.”

“Well, that’s just insensitive.”

Castiel grimaced.

“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot.”

And it was true. Sam sometimes was so… lively, that he sometimes just plain couldn’t tell that he was talking to a spirit instead of just… a regular friend.

“Yeah. I forget too, sometimes,” Sam admitted. He stayed quiet for a while. “Do you think I don’t want her to change because I can’t really do it anymore? I mean… I’m always going to be the person I was when I died.”

“Well… if everything that Meg told me about you is true, I don’t think you’re the worst person you could be, Sam Winchester.”

“Meg is my wife, dude. I don’t think she would be an impartial judge.”

Castiel laughed, but he noticed Sam’s expression had saddened.

“What is it?”

“I always thought we were going to change together,” Sam explained. “Grow old in that house. Maybe even outlive Don and take over the HOA. And now…”

He was lamenting everything that never came to pass. Castiel could understand that.

“I’m… I’m really sorry, Sam. My condolences.”

Sam made a weird sound, something between a sigh and a chuckle.

“What?”

“It’s just… no one’s ever told me that before,” Sam explained. “It’s… weird. But I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome…” Castiel said, but when he blinked again, Sam was gone, so he wasn’t sure if he’d heard him.

That was one way to finish the conversation, he supposed.

He got out of his car, already worried about the next problem. What the hell was he going to cook for Christmas dinner that wouldn’t cause Anna to have an aneurysm?


	13. Festive

It turned out he shouldn’t have worried so much. Anna called him a few days before she arrived and while Castiel was sure she was going to micromanage every single aspect of the Christmas dinner, it turned that she was too nervous about her own news to do that this time.

“I rented a hotel room. It’s not too far away.”

“Why did you do that? I know my couch isn’t exactly comfortable, but Gabriel won the guest room fair and square…”

“I invited someone.”

Castiel went quiet. That could only mean…

“Her name’s Ruby,” Anna said. “We’ve been seeing each other for six months.”

“You didn’t mention her over Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah, she was visiting her parents and she invited me, but I said no and it was a whole thing… look, she told me I need to take this relationship more seriously if I wanted us to last. So this is me, taking it seriously. And your couch isn’t big enough for two people. I’m not gonna make her sleep on it.”

“Fair enough. Should I call Gabriel and warn him about this?”

“I would appreciate it a lot if you did, yes.”

“Why is she so nervous about it? You have met her girlfriends before, haven’t you?”

Castiel turned around and was not surprised to find Sam. It was like having a roommate who got bored intermittently and had nothing better to do than to listen in on his conversations. He was getting used to the idea that he wouldn’t get his privacy back until Sam “moved on”, whatever that meant and whenever that happened.

“No, actually. This would be the first serious girlfriend she’s ever brought here. Anna has… some hang-ups about her sexuality,” Castiel explained. “Our father was a preacher and he was extremely conservative.”

“He was a homophobe,” Sam pointed out.

“Among other things. He was also very much into making us compete for his affection,” Castiel continued. “Luc was always the golden child. Perhaps that was why he became such a sociopath. In any case, it was thanks to him that we became closer after some turbulent years. We had to close ranks around Jack to keep him safe.”

“So… it was actually Jack who did that.”

Castiel smiled to himself. That was another way to look at it.

“Do you know if Meg is coming?” he asked, to change the topic.

“She’s thinking about it,” Sam said. “I’m trying to subtly push her to do it, but…” He sighed. “She always hated Christmas.”

“Can’t say I blame her,” Castiel said. He sat down in front of his computer and started looking up recipes for a new menu. Balthazar had confirmed that he was also bringing a plus one, so that meant seven people were going to eat there…

“What’s so bad about the holidays?”

Castiel looked up. He’d almost forgotten Sam was there.

“What?”

“You hate them too, don’t you?” Sam said, in an accusing tone. “What’s so bad about them? I always thought they were a time to meet with friends and family and just be around people you otherwise never see all year. What’s so terrible about that?”

It was a fair question. Castiel thought about it for a second.

“I think it’s the obligation aspect of it,” he said. “This year, I don’t feel so bad because I am actually spending them with people I care about, but growing up, our dad invited a lot of people from church who were not… warm, exactly. And then when I was raising Jack, we had to spend them with his grandparents, who somehow blamed me for their daughter’s passing.”

“That’s ridiculous. She was sick.”

Castiel stared at him, disconcerted, until he remembered that had been what he told Meg about Kelly.

“In any case….”

Sam thought about it.

“Do you think I contributed to that? Because of all the dinner parties and family gatherings… Meg always insisted we should skip Christmas one year. Stay at home and just… uh, spend some quality time together.”

Sam’s smile indicated clearly about what kind of quality time he was talking about.

Castiel got up from his chair and walked into another room. Not because he had something to do in that other room (the kitchen) particularly, but because he suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Of course, he wasn’t naïve and he knew that Meg had liked being with Sam very much (all her comments about how handsome and fit he was), but he hadn’t expected… being confronted with it in such a frank manner.

To have something to do, he opened the fridge and found a jar of water.

“I’m sorry, did I say something?” Sam asked, appearing by his side.

Castiel didn’t even react anymore. Well, he did, but at least this time he didn’t drop anything on the floor. He was getting better at it.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure? Because you look…”

“It’s nothing!” Castiel said, cutting. He drank half of the glass of water, immediately regretting his reaction. “It’s just… I don’t know. Did Meg ever tell about anything that happened to her growing up? Because those associations are the ones that make or break the holidays for people and I know maybe I shouldn’t pry… I shouldn’t pry at all. Even if she told you, don’t tell me.”

Sam tilted his head and Castiel stopped his rambling. He really wasn’t doing himself any favors with it, but at least it shifted the focus of Sam’s attention.

“Well, I wouldn’t know,” he said, not even hiding the bitterness in his tone. “She’s told you more about her family than she ever did me.”

“You mean because of Tom?” Castiel scratched the back of his head. “You heard her, she thought you wouldn’t understand why she cut him off.”

“Yes, but then again… maybe Tom’s changed now,” Sam said. “You know, maybe he can provide some support for her, fix the way they left off things.”

“Do you really believe there’s anything that could be fixed after attempted murder?” Castiel narrowed his eyes.

Sam opened and closed his mouth, looking a lot like a fish out of the water.

“Well… I don’t know, maybe?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Hey, you’re supposed to help me…”

“I’m supposed to help Meg too,” Castiel reminded him. “And I don’t think pushing her into contacting someone who’s hurt her in the past is doing that, precisely. So I suggest you drop this idea.”

Sam didn’t like that. The temperature around them dropped as the ghost stepped closer to him.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it, if I were you.”

Castiel refused to be intimidated.

"Are you saying you know what's best for Meg in this regards? Are you saying we shouldn't listen to what she thinks about this? That's extremely arrogant of you."

Sam held his gaze for a moment. Castiel was sure he was going to argue with him, to tell him his opinion on that regards didn't count, or to make something fly around to make his point that perhaps I wasn't the greatest idea to defy him.

But in the end, he breathed in deeply (what a strange gesture coming from someone who didn't need to breathe anymore) and the temperature returned to normal.

"Maybe you're right," he conceded. "I'm sorry, I'm..."

"I understand," Castiel assured him. "You're just worried about her. That seems to be the state you exist in right now."

"I don't know if I'll ever stop.”

"Perhaps when you see that she's doing better," Castiel suggested. "I think that will allow you to move on."

"Maybe."

He looked somewhat sad, though. Before Castiel could ask him why, though, he disappeared.

* * *

Anna and Ruby arrived first on Christmas night, quite predictably. Anna was too much of a control freak not to and Castiel knew Gabriel and Balthazar enough to be aware that agreed upon times and deadlines were more of a lax suggestion. So he was not at all surprised to find his sister standing on the other side of the door with snowflakes melting in her bright red hair when he opened the door.

“Hi, are we late?” she asked, even though they were five minutes early. She hugged Castiel briefly and stepped inside. “Sorry, the weather is really starting to get cold. I read on the news there might be a blizzard later tonight, so maybe we’re going to have to leave early to get back to the hotel, but we can come back in the morning. Where should I put the potatoes…?”

Her voice got increasingly quiet as she walked away towards the kitchen. Castiel turned to look at the brunette woman that had been left standing on the doorway. She didn’t look disconcerted at all by what just happened, so he took he must have been used to Anna doing that sort of thing to her already.

“Merry Christmas. I’m Castiel,” he greeted her, extending his hand towards her.

“Ruby. Nice to meet you.”

Anna returned from putting the potatoes away, looking guilty that she’d forgotten her girlfriend in the entrance. By then, Castiel was already helping her take off her jacket and scarf.

“So, how did you meet Anna?”

“She passed out on me while donating blood,” Ruby said. “It was funny.”

“It wasn’t really that funny!” Anna protested, blushing.

They told him the story. Anna was doing a note on blood donation for the website she worked for and trying to demonstrate how easy it was and how people should do it even if there hadn’t been any recent highly publicized tragedy on the news, because hospitals always needed blood bags. Ruby had been the nurse in charge of taking Anna’s blood sample, but apparently her veins were so thin she had to poke her with a needle for longer than half a minute.

Their story differed from there. Ruby was certain that Anna had fainted, while Anna insisted she’d just felt a little dizzy and needed a minute. In any case, Ruby had felt bad for her and invited her to have a drink after her crew concluded filming the video. The rest, as they said, was history.

They told the story to Castiel, and then again when Gabriel arrived and one more time for Balthazar and Rowena, who was a redheaded Scot woman that Balthazar had apparently been seeing since September.

“Please, do not mention this is a record for me,” Balthazar requested of Castiel when they had a second to speak alone in the kitchen, with the excuse of getting the appetizers. “I don’t want to ruin this.”

“You must really like this woman,” Castiel pointed out. “This must be the longest relationship you’ve had in… ever?”

“Oh, be quiet,” Balthazar said, rolling his eyes at him.

Castiel was about to poke him a little more but his phone rang at that exact moment.

Meg.

“Hey, uhm… I really hate to ask you this, but I think you’re going to have to help me out if you want me to get to your house.”

“You want me to pick you up?” Castiel asked. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to do it. The suddenness of the request just took him by surprise and the snow was falling heavily now. It was going to take a while for him to get to her house…

“No, I want you to shovel the snow of your damn garden,” she replied. “It really isn’t easy to move through it with wheels.”

It took a second for Castiel to understand what she was telling him. When he finally got it, he just started running

“Woah, where’s the fire, bro?” Gabriel asked him as he dashed past him in the foyer.

Castiel didn’t bother to answer him. He just opened the door. Meg was a dark figure between the swirling snow, but she still raised her arm and waved at him. She had managed to get half-inside of the garden before her chair had got stuck.

“Meg, you should have called me! I would have waited for you outside!” Castiel said as he moved towards her.

“Well, I wanted to surprise you. Silly me to think that I wasn’t going to get caught in the snow.”

“Do you need help out there?” Balthazar asked.

There was really no way to push the chair through the mud and snow without getting it further stuck, so, though Meg protested and told him she could use both Balthazar and him as crutches, Castiel took it upon himself to get her to the house. He passed an arm through the back of her knees and another around her shoulders and picked her up.

“Seriously?” she protested, but there was amusement in her voice as she threw her arms around his neck.

“I’ve carried pieces of furniture heavier than you,” Castiel replied, truthfully. “Don’t worry about it. Balthazar, bring the chair in, please.”

The other guests had gathered around the door and they all stared at them with eyes wide open. Castiel realized how confusing it must have been for them, since he hadn’t told anyone besides Balthazar about her and he himself didn’t know she was coming until fifteen minutes prior.

“Umh… everyone, this is Meg,” he introduced her.

“Merry Christmas,” Meg said, with a grin.

Gabriel always found it easy to laugh, so it was no surprise that he was the first to do it. Afterwards, the ice didn’t break, but melted away just as easily as the snow in their clothes. Anna and Ruby were delighted to have another person to tell their meet-cute story to, Gabriel said Castiel had cooked too much anyway and Rowena and Meg immediately started getting along surprisingly well.

“These boys are truly something else, aren’t they?” Rowena told her as she poured some more wine on Meg’s glass. “Bless the workout the furniture makes them do.”

“I’ll drink to that!”

“You kept it quiet, eh, brother?” Gabriel said.

“It’s not like that,” Castiel said, blushing.

“Oh, so that means I can ask her out? Because, let me tell you…”

Anna kicked him underneath the table, which Castiel was thankful for.

The night went on surprisingly well. Meg drank and laughed and congratulated him for his food. They played charades and clue, which Rowena turned out to be surprisingly good at. They ate until they were full. By the time Castiel took out the Christmas cookies and cupcakes he’d ordered, the only one who wanted some was Gabriel, because of course he was a glutton and had a terrible sweet-tooth.

“You have to try one of these,” he insisted, placing the cupcake with green sprinkles in front of her face. “Come on, they’re delicious. I promise you won’t regret it.”

“Alright, alright,” Meg laughed and pulled her hair back. “Just one bite…”

“Is he really flirting with her?”

Castiel wasn’t at all surprised to discover that Sam was standing right next to his chair.

“Gabriel flirts with everyone,” he replied in a soft whisper and took a sip from his wine glass. Was he drinking too much? Well, it was Christmas.

“I don’t like it,” Sam groaned.

Castiel didn’t like it either, but he was used to Gabriel sucking up all the attention in the room. He just had one of those larger-than-life personalities, always cracking jokes or making smart comments that made people just want to spend time with him. It had happened back in school and even in college that people struck up friendships with him or with Anna in order to get closer to Gabriel. And yes, being an awkward teenager, he had resented him, but as he’d got older, he’d learned that Gabriel just couldn’t help being who he was.

During the night, he’d charmed all three of the people who were just meeting him. Ruby, Rowena and Meg seemed more than happy to sit around him and let him keep their glasses full and throw their heads back every time he cracked a joke. Of course, nothing was going to happen with Ruby (Castiel assumed) and if Balthazar was uncomfortable with the attention Gabriel gave Rowena, he managed to calm himself by keeping an arm around her waist or her shoulders or holding her hand at every turn.

Meg was the only one who Gabriel could, conceivably, struck up anything with. And yes, he couldn’t say he was happy with it, but what was he supposed to do? Start touching Meg the way Balthazar was doing with Rowena? Announce out loud that Meg’s dead husband didn’t approve of this?

No, all he could really do was sulk slightly, but at the same time…

Meg was smiling. She was laughing. She wasn’t just talking to Gabriel. She also talked with Ruby and Rowena a lot and the three of them were definitely getting along. So maybe a bit of Sam’s overprotectiveness was rubbing off on Castiel.

It was just a nice Christmas night and he wasn’t going to ruin the mood by being a complete asshat.

“Seriously?” Sam asked when Castiel stood up and started picking up the empty plates and glasses. “You’re really not going to do anything about it?”

“I am not,” Castiel replied as he moved towards the kitchen and put the plates away on the dishwasher. “And I would appreciate it you didn’t do anything to my brother either. He isn’t Don Richardson.”

“But…” Sam started protesting.

Meg’s laughter floated towards them. They both stood on the kitchen’s doorway, which definitely wouldn’t have been big enough for the two of them if Sam hadn’t had the ability to ignore physical boundaries like walls.

“She sounds happy,” Castiel said.

She looked happy, too. He didn’t think he’d heard laugh like that when she was with him, but then again, Castiel was very bad at telling jokes.

Sam still seemed a bit bitter about it, but he said:

“Yeah. Happier than she has been in a while.”

So that was that.

“Maybe we should really get going,” Anna said, around midnight. “The weather’s not getting any better and the Uber…”

“Honey, do you really think we’re going to get an Uber at this hour of the night on Christmas?” Ruby asked her, raising an eyebrow.

“Maybe we can be your Uber,” Rowena said. She accentuated the ‘r’ in a most charming way and Castiel figured he could understand why Balthazar was so taken with her. “Pretty girls like yourselves shouldn’t be out walking alone in a weather like this.”

“Thank you for the wonderful Christmas, Castiel,” Balthazar said to him at the door. Then he pulled him in a bit closer and whispered in his ear. “I get what you see in her. Don’t let Gabriel steal her away.”

Castiel didn’t bother telling him that it wasn’t like that. It would be hard to explain anyway. So he just smiled and said:

“I see what you see in Rowena.”

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Balthazar said, smiling wide. “She may be the woman who turns me into an honest man.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Castiel said.

Balthazar laughed, gave him a slap on the shoulder and then walked out with the three women. Anna waved at him from Balthazar’s car. More than just happy, she seemed relieved. The introduction of her new girlfriend had gone without a hitch and she was probably more than a little happy about it.

Gabriel was resting against the couch’s armrest. He had his eyes close, but Castiel knew that he would wake up and start saying he wasn’t really sleeping the moment someone said his name. Meg was also slightly slumbering, with her head on the back of her chair, but she opened her eyes the moment she heard Castiel walk back in.

“Hey.”

“Hello…” Castiel replied.

And then he realized something very, very embarrassing. Almost at the same time as Meg, because she looked around with increase alarm.

“Wait, they left?” She shook her head. “I was supposed to leave with them!”

“You… you didn’t say anything,” Castiel replied.

Meg opened and closed her mouth again.

“Dammit, you’re right!”

Then she laughed again, the same laughter as before and Castiel realized… she wasn’t happy. She was just drunk.

“Oh,” he muttered. “Oh, no. I can’t… Meg, I’m so sorry, I can’t drive you. I’ve had too much to drink.”

“You can’t do what now?” Gabriel slurred from the other side of the sofa.

“Meg has no one to take her home,” Castiel said, because of course he wasn’t going to let Gabriel drive her, as drunk as he was and with less than ideal weather conditions.

“Well, the answer’s very simple then,” Gabriel said, scratching his eye. “She’s going to have to take the guests’ room.”

“I don’t… I really don’t mean to impose,” Meg said, with a wince. As usual, she was very much not happy about asking for something she actually needed. Maybe that was why she hadn’t spoken up while the others were getting ready to leave.

“You’re not imposing at all,” Castiel assured her. “You can sleep on my bed and I’ll take the couch.”

“I can take the couch,” Meg said. “It’s really not an issue.”

“I have been reliably informed my couch is very uncomfortable…”

“Word!” Gabriel interjected.

“… so I insist.”

“Well, maybe it is,” Meg conceded. “But we have another little problem: those beds you’re so generously offering me are upstairs.”

Castiel opened his mouth and closed it again as Gabriel just lost it. This time, however, he pulled himself together quickly.

“Well, that’s not an issue either!” he said. “As you have seen, my brother is ripped enough to carry you upstairs, huh?”

He wiggled his eyebrows and Castiel understood why Anna had been so nervous about Gabriel saying something inappropriate around Ruby.

“You don’t have to,” Meg said, immediately. “Also if you’re drunk, perhaps that’s not the best idea.”

“We can try,” Castiel said. He looked around the room and just as he expected, Sam was hovering next to the window.

“I’ll make sure nothing happens,” he said, with a nod.

So, up they went. Meg was very tense in his arms this time, compared to how she had been when he’d carried her inside from the garden. Castiel couldn’t explain what the difference was, except that the time he spent with her in his arms was longer this time and he had to think about it before taking each step.

Sam was on the top of the stairs, constantly giving him directions.

“Don’t go so far to the left. Keep steady, dude. Just three steps to go…”

Gabriel followed them closely behind, with Meg’s chair folded and her backpack hanging from a shoulder. He extended it and exclaimed: “Ta-da! Your throne, my lady!” when they arrived at the top.

“Really sorry to have taken up the bed,” Meg said, with a grimace.

“Hey, no worries,” Gabriel said. “I’m still sleeping on a bed.”

“What?”

“We’re sharing, little bro!” Gabriel announced with a huge smile. “Even though you absolutely hog the sheets.”

“I do not…” Castiel started defending himself, but the way that Meg and Gabriel laughed indicated that they were definitely messing with him.

Gabriel stayed back while Castiel showed Meg to the guests’ room, luckily.

“Again, really sorry about not realizing…”

“I shouldn’t have…” Meg said at the same time.

They went quiet and then she laughed again. She pressed a hand to her forehead.

“I hadn’t drunk like this in a while,” she confessed. “I also hadn’t had this much fun in a while. Your family, they’re… they’re something else.”

“Yes, they’re a handful sometimes,” Castiel agreed.

Meg laughed again, but froze in the middle of it. She muttered “Oh” and reached into her backpack.

“I know you said no presents,” she said, as she took a rectangular-shaped object wrapped in festive paper. It was about the size of a notebook. “But I just thought… well, it’s not a new one. I did it ages ago, but it’s small enough that you can just put it wherever you like. I hope you like it.”

Castiel knew what it was even before she handed it to him and he could feel the edges of the frame through the thin paper.

“Meg, thank you,” he said, astonished. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” she replied, with a wince. “It’s embarrassing. And it’s okay if you didn’t buy me anything…”

“I did,” Castiel said. “I was going to go by your house to give it to you later this week.”

“You… really?”

“Do you want me to bring it to you now?”

Meg’s eyes lit up.

“I would love that!”

Castiel flew to his room. Gabriel was already sprawled on the bed, and, of course, he had helped himself to one of Castiel’s pajamas.

“How’s it going?” he asked, with a sleepy voice.

“How’s what going?” Castiel asked, as he rummaged through his closet in search of Meg’s gift.

“Bro, I’ve been talking you up to her the entire night,” Gabriel informed him. “Are you ready to close the deal with Meg?”

Castiel turned to him, surprised. He wasn’t… had he really done that?

“I, uh… it’s not… it’s not like that,” he said, pathetically. “But thank you.”

Gabriel hummed, skeptical.

“Whatever. Just put a sock on the doorknob and keep it low.”

He then pulled the cover over his head and pretended to fall asleep. Or maybe he really fell asleep. There was no way to know for sure. Castiel needed to have a conversation about this in the morning with him, definitely.

For now, however, he simply took the box with Meg’s gift back to the guests’ room… to find out that Meg was fast asleep above the covers. Sam was right by her side, doing something with her boots with a frown of frustration in his handsome features. He looked up when he heard Castiel come in.

“I can’t take them off,” he complained.

So Castiel undid the laces and gently pulled them off. Meg didn’t wake up, she simply snuggled deeper into the covers. Castiel pulled out a blanket from the closet and made sure to tuck her in so she wouldn’t be cold. He also placed the gift he brought for her on the night-stand where she could find it in the morning.

“Are you staying with her?” he asked Sam.

The ghost was sitting on the edge of the bed. His expression was one of deep tenderness as he ran his incorporeal fingers through Meg’s dark hair. She shivered and pulled the blankets up again.

“I always stay with her,” Sam said in a whisper, as if he thought the words Meg couldn’t hear were going to wake her.

Castiel left the room without answering to that comment. What could he say, really?

Gabriel groaned when he felt him getting into the bed next to him.

“Really, man?” he complained. “She’s already half in love with you and you couldn’t even make a move?”

Castiel opened his eyes wide and stared at the back of his brother’s head.

“What do you mean…?”

“I don’t even know why I bother trying to help you,” Gabriel said, covering his head with a pillow.

“Gabriel!” Castiel said, shaking his shoulder. “What did you mean?”

But of course, Gabriel was already asleep again or ignoring him, because he got no answer.


	14. Honesty

Meg woke up early the day after Christmas on a strange bed. She hadn’t drunk enough to get a real hungover, the way she used to when she was in college and she would spend the morning (well, more like the afternoon) after a party kneeling in front of the toilet while Sam held her hair back, but she still had her mouth dry and was disconcerted as soon as she opened her eyes.

This wasn’t her room. This wasn’t her bed. Why had she fallen asleep with her clothes on…?

Awareness and memories crept up slowly in her mind. She covered her eyes with her arm. Dammit, had she really asked Castiel to let her stay? Had he really carried her all the way upstairs? Not that she was complaining about that. She knew there was a lot that went into his work, physically, but she still hadn’t expected to find his biceps so firm, his back and shoulders so hard as she’d thrown her arms around them…

Well, she was never drinking again while he was around her, that was for sure.

She rolled over.

There was a small present in the night-stand, a little jewelry box with a red bow tied around it. She wasn’t greedy with gifts, she’d never cared much about them, but this… this was from Castiel. She’d met him only a few months ago and she already felt like he had always been part of her life.

She laughed when she opened it. It was a thin, silver necklace with a charm in form of a white cat hanging from it. The car had a very mischievous expression that definitely reminded her of old Machiavelli.

It was cute as hell. It wasn’t something she would have bought for herself had she seen it on a store’s window, but she was glad that Castiel had thought of her.

She moved to her chair, which had been carefully parked next to the bed. She didn’t have much hope to find a mirror inside of the closet’s door (did men even used mirrors that weren’t in the bathroom?), but she opened them up nonetheless.

She didn’t find a mirror, but she did see a few letters carved in the inside. They were faded by the years, but still legible.

_Jack Kline was here. 2011._

This had been his room.

Meg shuddered a little to think about it. She knew Castiel had mentioned giving away his things and keeping only a few mementos around the house, but she was surprised to know that he had repurposed the room. Maybe it was too hard to walk in there and see Jack’s presence everywhere still.

The message he’d left behind, almost hidden inside the door of the closet, was so simple and yet so touching.

Jack had been there. He’d grown and laughed and cried within those walls.

He’d only lived seventeen years, a tragically short life and a life he knew was coming to an end fast. Did he fear people were going to forget him? Years down the line, when and if Castiel moved out of the house, did he fear that he would somehow leave his memory behind too?

“Damn, kid,” she muttered. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know why she felt like crying, all the sudden.

She never would’ve been able to do what Castiel had done. She kept Sam’s side of the closet intact. She had never even gone through his clothes. She kept sleeping on her own corner of the bed, almost as if she expected his body to materialize next to her if she just gave him enough space. All of his books were still in the shelves and she’d even freaked out at Castiel when he’d touched his mug.

Was that unhealthy? Billie said that there was no timeline for grieving, that there was no obligation for her to do any of those things. But maybe Castiel had managed to have a certain level of… balance in his life because he had, to a degree, let go of the material things that tied Jack to that very space.

It was definitely something to think about.

But perhaps not that morning.

In her home, she was practically a ninja moving with her chair. Maneuvering it in the unfamiliar space of Castiel’s home was a different beast. The hall was a little too small for her to turn around the corner comfortably and she inadvertently kicked a pot with a withering fern when she tried to get inside of the bathroom. Luckily, Castiel had left a basket of hygienic products right next to the sink: disposable toothbrushes, deodorant and even tampons. What a considerate host, even if Meg wasn’t the guest he had been counting on.

She came out of the bathroom refreshed and wondered how the hell was she supposed to get downstairs when Gabriel came out of what must have been Castiel’s room, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“Good morning,” he muttered and disappeared around the corner on the way to the bathroom.

Castiel came out right after him. Wearing only blue pajama pants and a thin grey shirt.

Yup, those arms were definitely a lot thicker than they let on. Meg made a point to keep her gaze on Castiel’s face, not that that was any less distracting.

“Sorry, I’ll…” Castiel yawned. “Can you wait five minutes? I’ll take you downstairs so we can have breakfast.”

“You don’t have to. I can… crawl.”

“I’m not going to let you crawl.”

“It really isn’t an issue…”

“For fuck’s sake, just let the man carry you!” Gabriel screamed for the bathroom and punctuated that statement with the sound of the water flushing. “I’m going back to bed.”

Meg and Castiel exchanged a look and they both burst into laughter at the same time.

It wasn’t that Meg minded Castiel carrying her anywhere, but she felt a little like she was abusing a privilege she hadn’t earned. She knew Castiel would never think about it that way, of course, but she still felt like there was something she should be doing for him because of this.

Correction. She felt like she should be doing something for him because of everything he had done for her. He had been extremely generous and open with their friendship and she had just been… taking and taking. She didn’t know what he was getting from this, but she was certain it wasn’t enough.

She should be a better friend.

Castiel didn’t even have to ask her how she drank her coffee and got it perfect on the first try. She definitely needed to catch up.

They sat in the living room together, watching the white landscape beyond the window.

“I’m glad you liked it, by the way,” he commented.

Meg touched the cat pendant, only them remembering that she was wearing it.

“I loved it. Thank you so much.” She hesitated. “Did you…?”

“I’m thinking of hanging it right there,” he said, pointing at an empty space over the bookshelf. “I think it will be perfect.”

It would be, but it would also be very visible for anyone who came in there.

“Are you sure?” Meg asked, a little mortified.

“Of course. It’s beautiful and it should be seen,” Castiel said. “I know I’ve only seen four things you’ve done, but I think the same about all of them.”

Meg’s face was on fire. It was just a scenic view she’d painted ages ago, nothing special, but Castiel was treating it like it was a master piece. She hadn’t felt this flustered about anyone commenting on her works in ages. She had always been so confident about it, always certain that she was putting everything she could into them. She could take criticism and praise with the same ease, because even if she failed, she knew she had done her best effort. So she didn’t understand why those words were having that effect on her.

Perhaps it was because of the person who was saying them.

She meant to thank him, she really did. Instead, what came out of her mouth was a very stupid:

“Ha. Sam thought the same thing too. In his opinion, I should’ve had my own damn exhibitions every other week.”

“I’m inclined to agree.”

Castiel never resented her when she mentioned Sam. He never flinched or acted like it was a bother to be reminded that she had been married and still very much not over her husband’s death. He simply nodded and took it in stride. He even asked more questions about him, like he was trying to understand what their life together had been like.

That was why she didn’t believe what Gabriel had told her last night.

“So, I have to ask, what are your intentions towards my baby brother?” he’d asked in a moment when all the others had been talking or too distracted to pay attention to them.

“My intentions?” Meg had repeated laughing, because she had realized pretty quickly that Gabriel wasn’t the kind of person who said many things seriously.

But it turned out he was only half-joking this time.

“Listen, I know him very well, and the way he keeps looking at you… you’ve got him wrapped around your pretty little finger, don’t you?”

“What?” Meg had asked and this time her laughter had been somewhat forced.

Because she hadn’t thought of Castiel like that. Or, to be honest, she had, because it was impossible not to, but at the same time, she had been secured in the knowledge that it wasn’t possible. That Castiel was just being kind to her because he was the kind of person he was, that he would’ve done the same thing for any other friend he considered in need of his help. She had been secure in the knowledge that even if she sometimes found herself breathless when looking into his eyes or got lost in his words as he spoke, that nothing could happen. Castiel didn’t consider her like that. She could talk about her husband with him, she could joke around, she could hang out, and it would never be anything but a friendship.

What Gabriel was telling her was unbalancing her.

“It’s not like that…”

“Look, all I’m saying is that he’s too much of a gent to make the first move, so you’re gonna have to give him a little sign if you want it to be ‘like that’.” He drew air quotes with his fingers and poured himself more wine. “Make it neon bright and as clear as you can, too, because he’s really bad at hints too.”

Meg had emptied her glass. She felt… nervous, now.

“It’s… it’s a little complicated right now,” she said, not sure she wanted to bring up the dearly departed in the middle of a Christmas party to this nice stranger she’d known for all of two hours.

“Oh, I see.” Gabriel nodded, like what Meg had said a meaning that not even her could understand completely. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me what you’re going through. I assume Cas knows it. I’m just telling you what I see and I’m telling you that he’s never gonna bring it up, my brother would absolutely be down if you asked.”

Was that Castiel was trying to get? Meg had known plenty of guys who had befriended her in the hopes of getting in her pants, which was stupid, because back then all they had to do was ask. She had never got that vibe from Castiel and damn, they were too old to be dancing around each other like stupid teenagers. But then, if Gabriel’s assessment was right, why had Cas never said anything?

The answer manifested itself the moment she mentioned Sam that morning and Castiel had just smiled.

He’d never said anything because he knew that, on some level, Meg still considered herself a married woman.

He was so respectful of her grief that it was almost overwhelming.

She moved away towards the bookshelf and pretended to look at the books (Castiel read a lot of classics and poetry, apparently). But that also meant looking at the pictures he had there.

Jack looked a lot like a younger version of him, to the point where she wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had taken them for father and son. The pictures on the top shelf showed him as a teen, tall and awkward, wearing a graduation robe and a cap with a golden tassel. Then they seem to go back in time, to him as a kid playing with model trains or making a face for the camera.

The one of the third shelf showed him as a chubby little toddler being held up by a woman with brown hair and a kind smile.

“Is that Kelly?” Meg asked.

“Umh… yes, that’s her,” Castiel said. His voice sounded sad all the sudden.

Meg picked up the picture and looked at it closely. There were some faint dark circles around Kelly’s eyes as she held her baby up for the camera, but other than that…

“She doesn’t look sick,” Meg commented, frowning. Jack had to be a year or two at the time of the picture and Castiel had mentioned taking him in as a toddler, so this must have been around the time she passed.

Castiel’s steps on the carpet were so silent she was a little startled when he got next to her.

“Physically, she was fine,” he admitted. “She was dealing… with other issues. She was always a fragile woman and being married to the narcissistic emotional black hole that is my brother did nothing for her mental state.”

Meg immediately regretted bringing it up.

“Cas, you don’t have to…”

“It’s okay. I know you’ve been wondering.” He made a pause, like even despite that he was still trying to find the words for what he needed to tell her. “I always loved my nephew. I was a college student then and I used to babysit him for free whenever I could. I babysat him a lot because Kelly didn’t want him to be home when Luc was in what she described as ‘one of his moods’.”

“Oh, no,” Meg muttered. She could imagine how that story went without Castiel telling her. “Did he…?”

“She never described to me the extent of his abuse, but she didn’t need to,” Castiel stated. “She wanted to help him. She thought she could make him change, build a normal life with him. She was… a little naïve. In any case, Luc… I’m not sure exactly what he did, but he scammed some people at his company, stole some money and went to jail for the first time around that time. A short sentence, just two years, but he also left her and Jack in several thousand dollars of debt that she couldn’t pay off. Her parents refused to bail her out because they had done so in the past too many times and they were tired. They wanted Kelly to leave Luc. She wasn’t… later, we find out that Luc had convinced her to go off of her meds.”

“Oh, shit,” Meg muttered, because really, what else could she say? She suddenly felt guilty for unloading the story about Tom shooting at her on Castiel, because this sounded like much more of a horror story.

But also… perhaps this was why Castiel had been able to understand where she was coming from. And perhaps she owed it to him to listen to this.

“She came by that afternoon, asked me to look after Jack. I agreed, and I thought it would be a couple of hours, as usual. Then it turned into three hours, and then into four. I kept calling Kelly’s cell, but she wasn’t picking up. Finally, I called her parents and told them and I had Jack and that they needed to check up on Kelly. They… found her in the bathtub and…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “They blamed me forever, afterwards. During the funeral, her mother screamed at me that I should’ve noticed something, that I should have known what she was planning on doing.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Meg said, and it sounded so stupid. Like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

“It took me a long time to accept that was true,” Castiel admitted. He sighed. “Kelly left a note saying she said I was the best person to take care of Jack, so I wanted to honor her wishes. Her parents didn’t even fight for custody. They were distant towards him for a long time, like they blamed him too. Like if it wasn’t for him, Kelly would’ve left Luc before it came to this.”

“They were complete assholes.”

Both Meg and Castiel jumped. Gabriel had apparently managed to go into the kitchen, pour himself some coffee and come back to listen in on their conversation without them even realizing it. There was an expected hardness in his voice. He had joked and kept such a light tone the night before that Meg was frankly taken aback by how resentful he sounded now.

“They were mourning and not thinking clearly,” Castiel said, with a shrug. “I can’t blame them for the things they said, even if they were extremely painful.”

“I know you can’t. That’s why I do it for you,” Gabriel replied. His smile was so bitter it could have soured an entire candy store.

“Wow, that’s… I’m really sorry, Cas,” Meg said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“It’s fine,” Castiel assured her. “I like that we can talk about hard issues and… keep it honest between us.”

Meg didn’t know how to reply to that. Maybe her listening to this was good enough for him? Why was she suddenly so obsessed with evening out the score, so to speak, between the two of them? She was absolutely sure Castiel wasn’t keeping a score of any kind, so why was she doing it?

Gabriel finished his coffee and nonchalantly changed the topic.

“So, Meg, are you staying for the Milton’s after-Christmas board game extravaganza?” he asked. “Let me warn you, though, Monopoly can get intense.”

“That’s because you get overly competitive,” Castiel complained.

Gabriel gasped offended and pretended to clutch his invisible pearls.

“Brother mine, how can you say such a thing?” he complained. “I am the least competitive person ever born!”

“That is a blatant lie.”

“Well, it’s not my fault you don’t have the strategic mind to…”

“I think I should go home,” Meg said.

Both brothers stopped their bickering and turned towards her.

“Thanks for the invite, but… I think I’m going to pass. No offense.”

“None taken,” Castiel assured her. “Let me get dressed and I’ll take you home.”

Meg appreciated that he didn’t interrogate her further on why she wanted to leave. It wasn’t that she wasn’t enjoying Castiel and Gabriel’s company and it wasn’t that she wouldn’t enjoy an intense session of Monopoly with them and their sister. (She hadn’t talked to Anna much the night before, but if her girlfriend Ruby was to be believed, she was the most amazing woman in the world).

She had just a lot of things in her mind and she’d rather reflect upon them in the comfort of her own home.

“You’ve been quiet,” Castiel pointed out when they were halfway there. “I’m sorry if telling you Kelly’s story made you uncomfortable…”

“It wasn’t that,” Meg assured him. She wasn’t going to tell him what Gabriel had said, either, so instead she picked another one of the million thoughts swirling in her mind. “I mean, that just confirmed what I already thought about you.”

“What is that?”

“That you have the biggest heart,” she told him. “Maybe even too big for your own good.”

She had never in her life heard a grown man giggle. She didn’t think it could be that adorable.

“Thank you.”

He helped her with the chair as usual. He didn’t drive away until she’d climbed up the ramp and was about to open her door. She looked at him over her shoulder.

“You worried I’m gonna get stuck in the snow again, don’t you?”

“It’s crossed my mind,” he admitted. He waved at her, but she didn’t hear his engine until she was inside of her house.

Even then, she spent a few moments staring out of the window, making sure he really drove away. Not that she was paranoid he was going to get back suddenly and interrupt her, but she felt weirdly protective of what she had done.

She’d waited until Castiel had gone upstairs to change and Gabriel had his back turned to her. The sound of the camera shutter, however had given her away. She’d wanted the earth to open up and swallow her when Gabriel had turned towards her.

“Did you just… take a picture of the kid?”

“I, umh…” Meg had stuttered.

“What’d you need it for?”

“I… was thinking about… a surprise for Cas,” she’d said.

Gabriel had stared at her for a moment longer and then taken out his own cellphone.

“Give me your number. I have better pictures of him here that I can send to you.”

Meg turned on the heaters in the second flood so she wouldn’t have to dry her hair after her shower. She wrapped herself in the thickest bathrobe she owned and did something she hadn’t done in three years and headed down the hallway.

The house had four bedrooms. They had designated one to be the guests room, the second to be Sam’s home office. Meg always had the lowkey suspicion he wanted to turn these rooms into nurseries, had they had any children, but they’d agreed the smallest room, at the end of the hallway, was always going to be hers.

Her art supplies had been gathering dust for a while. The easels were all designed for someone who painted standing up, but she could do with a high stool and some pillows. Her paints were probably dry. She was going to need to get more or perhaps order some online, though she didn’t trust the colors they showed there.

Her brushes, however, were in perfect state and there were some blank canvasses that seemed more than perfect for what she was trying to do.

She checked the pictures Gabriel had sent her. There were many in which Jack was smiling, with full cheeks and a shine in his eyes, others in which he looked a bit paler and tired. He had a small gap between his front tooth and a bang he always kept on one side of his forehead. Meg chose a picture in which all these little details were visible and then grabbed a pencil, ready to start drawing his face over the white cloth.

If the room got a little colder, she was too focused on her work to truly notice it.


	15. Exorcism

Meg didn’t show up at the support group the Friday after Christmas.

Castiel wasn’t too concerned about it, initially. It had finally stopped snowing, but it was still a very cold day and he imagined her chair wouldn’t be easy to navigate in that weather. It was a shame thought that she wouldn’t call him up and ask him for a ride. He would be more than happy to give her one. They lived only twenty minutes away and it really wasn’t even that much of a detour for him.

He sent her a text, but two hours later, she hadn’t answered. It wasn’t like he was constantly checking his phone, but Meg usually didn’t leave him hanging like that.

Sam also wasn’t coming around. He didn’t do it every single day, but lately it seemed like he was in Castiel’s home a lot. Something about him being the only person he could really talk and not having much of an option.

The following day Meg still hadn’t replied and that was why he’d started worrying.

He still felt raw from having told her Kelly’s story, but he shouldn’t have. Meg wouldn’t do something like. She had reached out to the group, she had asked for help.

She could still be in some other sort of trouble.

Castiel tried to work on a piece of furniture he’d left abandoned before Christmas, but those thoughts were still plaguing him. What if Meg wasn’t responded simply because she wasn’t able to? What if she needed help but couldn’t reach out?

No, if she was in such dire trouble, he was certain that Sam would’ve showed up to inform him about it. He counted on him to help and protect Meg, so he would’ve told him immediately.

Thought, after what Gabriel had said on Christmas…

Sam apparently had no problem with the way Castiel felt about Meg, but if Meg even hinted at reciprocating his feelings, how would the ghost take it? Not that Castiel had his hopes up in that regards, not at all. But what if the reason Sam wasn’t talking to him was because he was jealous and mad…?

He was gaining nothing by running around in circles, wondering about all those things.

So after an agitated morning in which he checked his cellphone more times than he cared to admit, he finally did what he should have done from the start and called Meg.

“Hello…?”

That voice that answered on the other end was so weak and so hoarse at the same time that he had trouble recognizing it at first.

“Meg?”

“Yeah.” There was some coughing and puffing following that. “Shit. I forgot to answer your message. Sorry. I don’t feel so great.”

Castiel could have deduced that easily.

“What’s happening?”

“Called a doctor. Said it was just a flu.”

Castiel closed his eyes for a second, recriminating himself for indulging in all of the worst case scenarios without even considering that. Meg had been stuck out in the cold for who knew how long before she’d called him and of course Sam wouldn’t want to leave her side if she was sick.

“Meg, you should have told me.”

“Sorry. Not thinking right with all the, you know. Fever dreams.”

“I’ll bring you chicken soup,” Castiel decided immediately.

“You don’t have to…” Meg started protesting, but interrupted herself with another fit of coughs.

“Do you need me to bring anything else?” Castiel asked. “Medicine, extra tissues?”

“Really, I’m fine…”

“Yes, to all of those things!” Sam said, appearing suddenly in front of him. “She needs all of that! And make sure the chicken soup is made with organic ingredients, okay?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, not sure if to Sam or if to Meg herself.

“I didn’t want to leave her alone,” Sam said shrugging, at the same time Meg answered on the other end.

“Because I knew you’d do exactly what you’re about to do.”

“Meg, I don’t mind…”

“I know you don’t mind. That’s exactly the problem.”

“What…?”

“Ignore her, she’s half-delirious,” Sam insisted. “You need to start cooking the soup or you’re not going to be there for dinner time…”

Castiel raised a finger in front of him so he would be quiet.

“What do you mean?”

“You do so much for me,” Meg said. She did sound slightly delirious, but Castiel didn’t think they should dismiss what she was saying just because of that. “All the time, you’re always doing stuff for me and you’re so sweet. Why are you so sweet on me, Clarence?”

“I still don’t know who Clarence is,” Castiel pointed out. Sam shrugged, clearly not sure what Meg was talking about right now either.

“It’s… doesn’t matter,” Meg stated. “Just… can you spend one day not worrying about me?”

“No. Absolutely not. You need to be very worried about her right now,” Sam stated.

“Is this the best time to ask me to do this?” Castiel asked. “It sounds like you do need help.”

“I do, but that’s not the point,” she argued. “The point is; I want you to be around me, but not because I’m pathetic and I need you.”

“I don’t think that of you, Meg…”

“I know you don’t, but what if you do end up thinking it? What if I like, take, take and take and I never give you anything, you know? And you decide that’s not good enough for a friendship and you’d be right. I want you to be here because you like hanging out with me. Not because I need you to help me with whatever the hell is wrong with my life at the moment.”

She concluded that monologue with another fit of coughing. That was fine. It gave Castiel a few seconds to think about what she had said.

And it was more than fair, actually. Sam had told her that Meg had always been independent and kept people away. She might feared she could become a burden to him. He didn’t feel like that at all, of course, but maybe she was just asking him for some space and that was precisely what Castiel was going to give her.

As soon as he was sure that she wasn’t powering through this flu by herself.

“Do you have someone to bring you the meds you need?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Meg complained.

“Yes, and I don’t mean to invalidate your concerns about our friendship, but it would make me very happy to hear that you’re taking care of yourself and asking for the help you need.”

“Seriously?!” Sam exclaimed, indignant.

Meg, on the side, made a reflexive pause.

“I guess I can ask Bess Fitzgerald to give me a hand. Her father was a preacher and she’s very into the helping thy neighbor shit.”

“There you go,” Castiel said, with a soft smile. “I will come and see you…”

“Really?”

“… on New Year’s Eve, when you’re feeling better,” Castiel added, ignoring Sam’s blatant indignation. “We can watch a movie and celebrate together. Because I do like spending time with you, even if you don’t _need me_ to.”

Her only response for a moment was another cough.

“Does that plan sound good for you?”

“Yeah,” Meg’s hoarse voice came from the other side. “Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you.”

She hanged up, but Castiel was aware that was only half of the conversation he was to be having.

“What the hell, man?” Sam exclaimed. “You’re supposed to be helping her!”

“You heard her. She’s going to call Bess Fitzgerald.”

“She hates Bess Fitzgerald!” Sam argued. “Listen, I know what’s going on. This is typical Meg behavior. She doesn’t like asking for help, but in this case she really needs it…”

“I know,” Castiel agreed. “That’s why I told her that if she didn’t feel comfortable asking me for it, then she should ask someone else.”

“That’s not the point! The point is that she’s not going to do it regardless!”

“Well, in that case, you should hop on over to watch over her and make sure she does call her neighbor,” Castiel suggested. “And if she doesn’t, you can tell me and I will casually call her to check up on her again.”

Sam was very displeased by Castiel’s words, obviously. He was pacing around the room and shaking his head. Castiel headed for the coat hanger, because he was absolutely certain that it was about to get extremely cold inside of his house.

“No. That’s not good enough,” Sam concluded.

“It seemed like it was good enough of a compromise for Meg,” Castiel stated, as he put on a jacket.

“I told you, she’s sick, she has no idea what she’s talking about!” Sam insisted.

“She made her message very clear to me and I think I need to respect that.”

“You’re supposed to be helping us!” Sam screamed out.

And there it was.

It was worse than ever before. It wasn’t just a cold spot around where Sam was standing. It was a fog that seemed to cover the entire room, the windows became frosted and Castiel felt it like a stab of ice passing through his clothes, his skin, his flesh, directly into his bones.

Since the first time Sam had shown up at his place, since Castiel had come to accept that he truly was what he claimed he was, he hadn’t felt scared of Sam. Startled by him sometimes, yes, and sometimes annoyed by how overzealous he was about protecting Meg. But never scared, never like he was in any danger by being in his presence.

He felt scared then. His heart was beating against his ribcage, pumping a rush of adrenaline through his veins with such intensity it made him dizzy. A primal fight-or-flight instinct took over him. Something in his mind, in the back of his mind, kept screaming at him to get out of there, to turn around and open the door and keep running away from that house, away from that presence, until his lungs burned and his legs gave out.

This wasn’t the Sam he knew. Sam, the ghost, Sam, the concerned husband, Sam… his friend. Yes, he’d grown so used to his presence that he’d started thinking about it as his friend.

But not then. Not while he was standing in front of him, high and imposing, with pure rage distorting his features.

It passed.

It felt like an eternity, but it was just a few seconds. Sam’s entire body relaxed and for a second, his figure seemed different. Less solid, in a way. More ethereal than usual.

It took a second for Castiel to realize that he was seeing through Sam’s body.

“Umh…”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Sam said, pinching his nose. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t… I know you’re trying. I know you care about Meg. I shouldn’t have…”

“Are you okay?” Castiel asked. His concern surprised even him. Could a man that was already dead be truly harmed in any way?

“I’m… I’m wearing a bit thin. I told you, these… things… sometimes it takes a lot out of me.”

His voice sounded different as well. Less clear. Not like a whisper, like he was talking in a lower tone, but like he was hearing him underwater or through a faulty radio transmission.

“Sam, what?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I flipped out. I think… I’m gonna go home. I’m stronger there.”

“Yes,” Castiel said, uncomfortable but trying to hide it. “Yes, okay, you should do that.”

“So…” Sam started saying, but he had vanished before he could finish the word.

Castiel stood in his living room, overwhelmed and alarmed by what he’d just seen. Sam had never acted like that before, it had never…

Missouri Moseley picked up the phone on the second ring.

“What’s the problem, Cas?” she asked even before Castiel told her he had a problem. She truly was psychic.

He told her about what he had been doing since September, about the way that Sam had been behaving and about what had happened just then. She listened patiently and didn’t interrupt him once. She also didn’t tell him he was overreacting or wrong for having been scared just a moment before.

“Well, it sounds like you’re in quite a pickle,” she said when he was done talking.

“Yeah, no…” Castiel suppressed the urge to say something sarcastic. “I just don’t know what else to do. I am trying to help Meg, but the more I do it, the more it seems like it… I don’t want to say it upsets Sam, but he definitely acts more and more agitated every time I do something different from the way he wants me to, if that makes sense.”

“It does make a lot of sense,” Missouri reassured him. “Ghosts… they tend to become obsessive with the things they cared about or did when they were alive. Sam’s biggest concern was his care for his loved ones and he’s been doing that through you, so I am not surprised he’s become more demanding. He might not even realize that what he’s doing or asking you to do might be in Meg’s detriment.”

“Yes. Yes, thank you!”

“So you need to act like a sanity buffer for him,” Missouri suggested. “Respecting his wishes is important, but you also need to keep in mind that overtime he might become more irrational.”

“I think that’s what I fear. I’ve been talking to him and he seems like he was such an amazing person. You said ghosts could lose themselves and I’m afraid this might happen to him.”

“Has he been acting violent towards you or anybody else?” Missouri asked. “I don’t mean just snapping, I mean physically trying to hurt someone.”

“No, he…” Castiel started, but then he stopped.

Don. Sam had tripped him, he had made him pour hot coffee on himself. He hadn’t cared at the moment, because Don was a major douchebag and he’d thought Sam was just playing some minor pranks on him. He didn’t think Sam meant to truly hurt him, but in retrospect…

“He has, hasn’t he?” Missouri asked and Castiel figured there was no point in lying to her.

“It hasn’t been anything major…”

“It’s still a red flag. I thought having you around might help him stay sane, but he might be deteriorating faster than we thought.”

“What can I do?”

“I don’t know, other than what you’ve doing,” Missouri said. She made a pause. “Have you’ve figured out why he came to you for help?”

“I… no, not really.” Castiel frowned. “I thought you said he came to me for a reason. As in, some sort of… divine intervention thing that I wasn’t supposed to understand.”

“No, I meant there’s a literal reason he came to you and finding out what it is might help you understand how to help him move on,” Missouri said. “Boy, you’re dumb as a pile of rocks, aren’t you?”

Castiel tried very hard not to feel insulted by that comment. He didn’t entirely succeed.

“How am I supposed to figure that out?”

“I don’t know. But, Castiel…” Missouri’s tone change to something lower, a warning he knew in his gut that he couldn’t ignore: “Stay vigilant. Be careful.”

* * *

Meg felt much better by New Year’s Eve. Not entirely recovered, no. Her nose was still stuffy, her throat was still itchy and she still felt like an invisible thief sneaked into her house while she slept and beat her up with a baseball bat. But at least she didn’t have a fever anymore and she could stay awake for longer than three hours. So she was absolutely ready for Castiel’s visit and movie night.

She couldn’t think of a better way to receive the New Year, not a single person in the world she would rather spend it with.

The intensity of that realization scared her a little, but she wasn’t going to think about it. Not right now, when her brain was still working at half its usual capacity.

She still smiled like an idiot when she opened her door and found Castiel standing on the other side, holding an overflowing paper bag with snacks and a bouquet of flowers on the other.

“Am I late?” he asked, even though, as usual, he wasn’t.

“Come right in. Oh, thank you,” Meg said when he handed her the flowers. “What’s this about?” she asked, but then she found the card that was tucked in them.

It read: “Get well soon!” with the picture of a cat with a thermometer sticking out of his mouth.

She laughed until she had another coughing fit.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel said, patting her in the back.

“… no problem,” she assured him. “Get comfortable. I’m gonna put these in water.”

She moved to the kitchen to do just that, but she could still hear Castiel moving around the living room.

“What are these?” he asked.

Meg didn’t even have to look to know he meant the drafts she’d left on the coffee table.

“Well, Bess Fitzgerald took it upon herself to nurse me back to health and was here for hours every day,” Meg explained as she looked for a vase. She found a small round one in the deepest corner of her cabinet. “She cooked or cleaned or made me this… awful cayenne pepper concoction that she swore would help me breath better. Sometimes she had to bring her daughter Gertie, though. She’s three and a half and Bess is raising her without screens, because it apparently affects kids’ attention span or some shit like that, so she had to be entertained _somehow_ while her mom was busy.”

She rolled back into the living room. Castiel had picked up some of the drafts and was looking through the spread pages.

“So you taught her how to draw?” he said, pointing out at a very crude drawing of a purple Dachshund dog.

“I might have given her some pointers,” Meg said. She placed the vase next to Sam’s green mug. She didn’t know why, but she felt that was the right place for it. “I didn’t hate it. Despite popular belief, I don’t hate kids.”

“Who believes that?”

Meg sometimes needed to remind herself that she hadn’t known Castiel for ages and he wasn’t yet privy to every single little detail of her life.

“I’m sure the neighbors think so since I refused to give out candy for Halloween,” she reminded him. “Also… all of Sam’s family.”

“Oh?” Castiel asked. He wasn’t looking at her, instead very busy placing the snacks on the coffee table. He carefully avoided the corner where the mug and the vase were. “Why did they think that?”

“Well…”

Meg moved closer to the couch and was absolutely certain for a second that the lever was going to be either gone or not work at all. She was relieved to find the couch could still turn into a bed without her needing to do anything else to it. It would be more comfortable to sit on there and watch movies and Castiel could sleep there if he wanted to. Maybe she should have had the guests’ room clean, but there were so many of Sam’s things still there…

“Meg?”

Meg realized she was dodging the question.

“They always asked when we were going to have children,” Meg said, sighing. “First we said we just wanted to enjoy our relationship as it was. Then we said that we were waiting until we were a bit more financially stable. Then we bought this house and I ran out of excuses.”

“ _You_ ran out of excuses?”

“Sam knew I wasn’t keen on the idea. It’s just… I could never do what you did, step up like that for a kid. I don’t like the idea of a helpless little human depending on me for everything. Maybe once they were grown up and could have their own life, I wouldn’t mind, but just something that it’s so… needy as a baby; it makes me uncomfortable.” She cringed. “You probably think I’m a monster for saying that.”

Castiel didn’t do that. He also didn’t turn around and walk out of the house. He sat on the couch and methodically undid the laces of his boots.

“I don’t think you’re a monster. Being a parent is a full-time job and you have to be willing to do it. If you’re not, then the responsible thing to do is not accept the job.”

He stretched his legs over the couch. Meg let out a sigh of relief. She didn’t know why, of all the confessions she had made to Castiel, this had been the one that felt the hardest.

She sat on the couch and also took off her shoes. She still felt like she needed to get something off her chest.

“I lied to Sam about it,” she confessed. She didn’t turn around to face Castiel as she said this. “I told him that I would think about it and that I could see myself having children if it was with him. The truck hit us five minutes later. Literally the last thing I ever told him was a lie.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have been honest with him,” Meg shot back. “I was just trying to… I don’t know, avoid the issue. Not really think about it. So I thought it would be easier to lie than to admit we disagreed on something as fundamental as that.”

Her voice broke slightly at the end. Goddammit, why did she keep doing this? She wanted to spend time with Castiel, her new friend, perhaps the first true one she’d had in a very long time, but she kept bringing Sam up. She kept telling him all of these little details, like she couldn’t shut up about him.

It was like Sam was with them, all the time. She had always in a way felt like he was still there. That was why she kept his things, why she never moved the mug, why she talked to him out loud when she was alone. It had never bothered her. It was, like Billie had said, like a phantom limb, like she couldn’t bring herself to think he was gone even though he was.

But when she was with Castiel, she wanted to be just with him. He never complained about her talking about Sam, but perhaps it was because, as Gabriel had said, he was too much of a gent to do so. But it still wasn’t fair. She wanted to be Meg around him, just Meg, not Sam’s widow.

Was it selfish of her to want to forget everything she’d lived with Sam for five minutes? Was it stupid of her to pretend like that pain of his absence could even go away? Was she really leading Castiel on?

The thoughts in her mind were a whirlwind, but they all calmed down at the same time when Castiel’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was heavy and warm and Meg instinctively put her own over it, their fingers intertwining together. She held on to him like he was a rock in the middle of a tempest.

“I think if he knew that you lied, he’d forgive you,” he told her. “But I think what’s most important is that you should forgive yourself.”

Meg’s breath came out shuddering and soft.

“Dammit, you’re worse than Billie.”

Castiel’s chuckle did a lot to alleviate the knot in her stomach. He let go of her so she could lift up her legs with her hands and get comfortable next to him and then threw a blanket over the both of them.

Comfortable. Warm. Close.

He didn’t put an arm around her shoulders, but Meg wasn’t sure that would have bothered her.

“Do you think I’m pathetic for constantly falling apart over things like this?” she asked, point blank. She would’ve have blamed him if he did, but of course he shook his head.

“When I was at my worst, I fell apart for even smaller things,” he assured her. His hand palmed his chest for a second, an involuntary gesture that he stopped quickly. “But it is New Year’s Eve, Meg. It’s the night to leave behind all sort of things and look forwards to the future. So if you want to leave your guilt behind on this issue, tonight is the best night to do it.”

“I don’t even know how to begin doing that.”

Castiel thought about it for a second and then stood up quickly. He went to the kitchen and he was back before Meg could even start to ask him what exactly he was doing. He brought back the garbage bin, a pan, and her box of matches.

“What are you planning to do?” Meg asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“A little something Jack and I used to do,” Castiel explained. “Whenever he felt like things were too heavy, he liked to exorcize them.”

“How, exactly?”

Castiel searched among the papers he’d pushed to the side for the snacks and grabbed some that were blank. He handed them to Meg along with the pen.

“Write something that you want to leave behind this year,” he instructed her. “And we’ll burn it at midnight.”

“I don’t think the smoke detectors are going to like that,” Meg protested.

“We can go outside five minutes before midnight,” Castiel proposed. “It’ll be like having fireworks, except they won’t blow up in the air.”

Meg gave him a skeptical look, but Castiel seemed entirely serious about what he was proposing. And honestly, she was a bit intrigued.

“Alright. How does this work?” she agreed as he gave her a pen.

“Just write something you feel you’ve carrying for too long,” Castiel instructed her. “Something you want to be able to let go of.”

He also wrote some things in his own page and Meg resisted the urge to peak over his shoulders. She really had no idea what he could possibly feel like letting go of. Compared to her, he definitely had his life more put together. Whether it was because of the help he’d been receiving or not, that was irrelevant.

Meg read what she’d written almost without paying attention to it.

_Fear. Anger. Guilt._

_I’m sorry, Sam._

Maybe she did need help after all. And she’d never been good with words, so instead, she did a quick sketch at the bottom of the page. She drew her guilt like a tiny, ugly devil, with big horns, long nails and sharp teeth he sank on her shoulder.

She didn’t show the picture to Cas. It wasn’t one of her best, anyway.

“So now, what?”

“Now we watch a movie,” Castiel said, picking up the remote. “And we don’t worry about it until midnight.”

That was the easy part. They chose the cheesiest, worst sounding rom-com in the entire movie selection. Meg made sarcastic comments about the art department, about the writing, about the acting and Castiel laughed and gave her more snacks.

It was definitely better than what she’d done in previous New Year’s Eves, which was going to bed early with noise cancelling headphones.

“There’s only five minutes left,” Castiel announced as the guy in the movie ran to the airport to stop the girl from leaving with another dude, without realistically being tackled and dragged away in cuffs by the TSA. “Are you ready?”

Meg had stopped being interested in the movie for a while. They put on their coats and walked outside. The light snow crunch underneath their feet as the found a spot where to stand. Castiel held up the pan he’d brought from inside while he check his cellphone screen with the other hand.

“Ready,” he said. Meg held the matches up. “Set…”

Meg turned on the match. She feared that the cold winter night would turn it off, but Castiel shouted: “Go!”. She let it fall inside of the pan and the papers caught fire almost immediately. The golden flame grew and started taking it all, and Meg couldn’t help it.

She laughed. She laughed like a tiny child, like there was nothing in the world funnier or better than this. She could hear fireworks going off in the distance, but the small flame that swallowed her little papers and reduced them to black, smoldering ash was to her more fascinating than any of them could be.

She laughed even harder when Don Richardson stepped out of his house wearing a thick black parka and a frown upon his face.

“Fireworks are against HOA regulations!”

“That’s okay, Don, we don’t have fireworks!”

Castiel put the pan over the floor as the fire became more intense. Don stared at them like they were insane.

“What the hell are you doing then?”

“An exorcism!” Meg told him, with a grin.

Don stared at them for a moment longer, but then retreated inside the house. Castiel and her looked at each other… and just burst into laughter at the same time. The smoke rose into the cool, clean air of the first minutes of the new year and Meg wasn’t sure if it took away her little guilt demon.

But she definitely felt lighter after burning it.


	16. Resolutions

Castiel lost count of how many jokes they told that night as they watched movie after movie (Meg seemed to have a knack to pick the hilariously bad ones). He lost count of how many sodas they drunk and how many snacks they ate. He lost count of the minutes that turned into hours, because he was simply enjoying Meg’s company too much.

Even when the level of jokes and the conversation slowed down and then died down completely. Even when their eyes were bleary and fluttering shut. Even when they weren’t even really paying attention to what was going on in the screen because it was just too hard to focus on it. Even when they ran out of snacks, so now they were only opening their mouths to yawn.

Even then, there was no place in the world he would rather be. He’d started the year the best way he could’ve had: by making her laugh. He would remember that for years to come.

He would also remember, he was sure, a bunch of dispersed things that his brain seemed to only be able register slowly.

The movie kept going, but he wasn't even sure which movie it was anymore. The dialogue came floating towards him like in a confusing haze, or perhaps it was that his mind simply refused to make sense of the words. The living room was bathed in the cold, silver glow of the TV screen

The weight of her head against his chest. He had no idea when he’d leaned back on the couch and when she’d snuggled closer to him, but there she was. The smell of lemon in her hair. The sound of her calm, deep breathing. The peace in her sleeping face.

Castiel stared at her silently. He wanted to run a hand through her hair, but he didn’t want to risk waking her up. The moment had the clarity and the fragility of a soap bubble and he was afraid doing or saying anything in that moment would’ve ruined it entirely.

So he just laid there, with Meg using him as a pillow and he couldn’t complain. He couldn’t complain because he had never met a woman as strong and beautiful as her. He had never met someone who could make him forget the time like she did. No one that made him feel so at ease when in her presence…

The realization hit him like a slap in the face.

He loved her.

That pull, that curiosity that had drawn him towards her had germinated deep in the back of his mind and had bloomed into something else entirely while he wasn’t paying attention. He’d told himself over and over that it meant nothing, that he had to be respectful of both Meg and Sam, that Meg only saw him as a friend and so this was never going to happen.

But none of that had mattered.

Falling in love with her had been as easy as taking a step. As natural as breathing.

Gabriel and Balthazar had known it, of course, even before he did. Gabriel had said something about Meg loving him back, but Castiel had, as before, pushed that away before he could even consider it.

Because of course not.

Because it couldn't happen.

Because all of these perfectly reasonable excuses that he kept on giving that meant absolutely nothing when Meg moved slightly and buried her face against him.

He dared to move. He did it slowly, as gently as he could. His hand rested on the small of her back, cradling her body against his. He closed his eyes, letting this electrifying feeling wash over him.

Every second he'd spent with her had chipped away at the dam of good intentions that had kept his feelings at bay, but they were overflowing and overwhelming him now and he couldn't find it in himself to care.

He loved her, dammit.

And he couldn't remember anymore what was so wrong with that.

He moved his other hand to her hair, her strands so soft in his fingertips...

Meg sighed and moved again and Castiel froze, afraid that he'd woken her up...

"Turn off the TV, Sam," she mumbled.

The TV turned off, seemingly by itself, plunging him into darkness. He was comfortable and warm under the blanket and holding Meg, but suddenly he felt very, very cold.

And it wasn't just because of the ghost that had appeared in the middle of the living room.

His chest tightened as he remembered exactly why he needed to keep his distance. He closed his eyes and gave himself a second to collect his thoughts. He was wide awake now and the epiphany that he'd had while he was half-asleep and staring at Meg's face vanished as quickly as the smoke from their "exorcism".

But the sudden anguish that came along with it wasn't going anywhere.

He raised his head slightly. Sam was staring at the both of them. His expression seemed gloomy.

"Where have you been?" Castiel asked, mouthing his words not to wake Meg up.

"I was… staying away. Didn’t think me being here making the temperature lower would help her," Sam said, with a shrug. He seemed sad all of the sudden, for reasons that were, as always, beyond Castiel's comprehension. "She shouldn't sleep here. She'll be more comfortable and warm upstairs."

He was right, of course.

Castiel looked at his phone. It was four in the morning and there was a bitter taste on his mouth for falling asleep without brushing his teeth. He shook Meg as gently as he could, but she still startled awake and blinked at him several times, like she didn't remember who he was or why he was there in the first place.

"Oh," she muttered after a few seconds. "Oh, right."

"Are you okay?" Castiel asked, frowning.

"Fine," she assured him and rubbed her eyes. "I was just dreaming."

Castiel didn't ask her what about. He wasn't sure he would've liked to hear the answer.

"You should go to bed," he told her.

"Are you going to be fine here?" Meg asked him with a yawn. "Do you need another blanket or an extra pillow...?"

"I'll be okay," Castiel promised her. "Go to sleep."

Meg's movements were slow and clumsy, but she still managed to put herself back on the chair with ease.

"Goodnight," she wished him.

A few seconds later, he heard the whirring of the stairs lift as it carried her away from him.

Sam stayed in the living room with him the entire time, not saying anything.

Castiel was wide awake now, so he figured he might as well begin cleaning the remains of their little private party. He picked up the wrappers on the floor and gathered the empty cans.

"You shouldn't be eating all the junk," Sam opined.

"It's New Year," Castiel said, shrugging. "I indulged."

"I'm just saying," Sam continued. "It can't be good for your heart."

Castiel stopped in the middle of washing a glass and turned towards him.

“How did you know I have heart problems?”

Sam opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“You must have mentioned it to Meg.”

“Yes. I must have,” Castiel agreed in a whisper. He wasn’t convinced, though. He was certain he had told her he had health issue, but hadn’t specified which kind. Maybe Sam had just deduced it.

“You okay, man?”

“I’m fine. It’s been a fun night,” Castiel said. And it had been. Right up until the point he realized he was in love with Meg and she was never going to feel the same way. Then it’d just become depressing.

“Cas, listen…” Sam started saying, but Castiel walked just past him, to pick up more dishes and ignore just how bummed he was about everything. He had to.

It was the right thing to do.

“Cas,” Sam insisted.

Castiel finished drying the now clean dishes and put them away as best as he could. He stood in front of the sink for a long while, trying and failing to gather all his thoughts.

“I… I think I’m going to sleep now,” he decided. “Maybe wake me up early so I can make Meg breakfast?”

“I don’t think… Cas. Cas, will you listen to me for a second?”

Castiel stopped moving, if only because the last question sounded tense. Like Sam wanted to be mad about something, but was holding back on it. The ghost was breathing in and out. Was that really helping him to calm down or did it work only because thought it did? It was just one of those things that Castiel would never understand completely.

“I… I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Castiel asked.

“Because… because I know, man, okay?” Sam stated. “I know how you feel. And I know it must be horrible to you that Meg… that she’s still…”

“That she’s still in love with you?” Castiel asked, softly.

Sam looked contrite, like it was somehow his fault that this entire situation happened. And it was, in a way. If he hadn’t asked Castiel for help, he never would’ve become closer to Meg. Gabriel was right; he never would’ve made the first move because he was too much of a coward. And she wouldn’t have simply out of respect for Sam’s memory.

“This… this entire situation is a mess,” Sam said.

“Understatement.”

“Look, if you want to back off…”

“I can’t,” Castiel cut him off before Sam could even finish that suggestion. “It wouldn’t be fair. To you or to her. Meg is lacking in the way of friends and I can’t abandon her just because my feelings got… tangled up.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture he apparently couldn’t quite control.

“Man, I’m…”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Castiel assured him. “I’m doing this because I want to.”

“I’m sorry anyway,” Sam said. “It’s still shitty to you.”

Castiel tilted his head.

“What?” the ghost asked, defensively.

“I just thought you’d be angrier at the fact that I’m in love with your wife.”

“Well, you know… it’s not like I can duel you for her honor,” Sam said, with a shrug. “And besides, it’s not like…”

“It’s not like she feels that way too,” Castiel understood and Sam cringed a little.

“I’m really…”

“Say sorry one more time and I swear I’ll sage you.”

They stared at each other for a second longer.

Sam broke down laughing first and Castiel had to follow him. The image in his mind regarding this was just too ridiculous not to.

“Oh, man!” Sam said, wiping and invisible and probably fake tear from his eye. “You couldn’t get rid of me for long anyway.”

“No,” Castiel said. “I guess I couldn’t.”

Missouri’s words were still ringing in his ears, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about them.

* * *

As much promises as there were for January to be a new start, a blank page, a new year to have all resolutions achieved, to Meg it just looked like pretty much every other month. With the added shittiness of it being cold as all fuck.

“Anyone wants to share?” Billie asked during the session. “Meg?”

“What’s there to share?” Meg asked, rolling her eyes. “My husband’s dead, I’m sad about it. Same old.”

There were some new faces in the group that stared at her with horror. The regulars, however, laughed as they usually did.

“You mentioned there was an important date coming up,” Billie reminded her.

Meg sighed.

“Yeah, I guess. Our wedding anniversary is at the end of the month. We would’ve been married for six years, if Sam had been alive.”

“Do you want to tell us about your wedding?”

“What’s there to tell? It was a wedding. I had a white dress, Sam’s mom cried, there was food and booze.” She stopped and thought about it. “We had… so many protests because of the date we chose. I mean who gets married in winter, right? But Sam wanted to go skiing for our honeymoon and he wanted it to be close to Valentine’s Day. He was corny like that.”

Billie took some notes in her little black notebook.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “You always talk about what Sam wanted and what Sam felt about your relationship, but you never… say anything about how you felt about it.”

“What do you mean?” Meg said, narrowing her eyes.

“There’s this… let’s call it, a cultural mandate to not speak ill of the dead,” Billie explained. “It’s considered rude to bring up their defects, their mistakes, particularly if they were someone we were very close to. It’s a form of showing respect for their memory, to only focus on the good stuff. But the other side of that coin, is that we might end up unrealistically idealizing them.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

“You’ve said that you knew Sam for years and years before you finally decided to have a life together,” Billie reminded her. “Why do you think you weren’t able to make that commitment before that point?”

“Because we were young and stupid?” Meg shrugged. “I really don’t know where you’re going with this.”

“Okay, let me ask you another way: did Sam and you ever fight?”

Meg really wasn’t sure what Billie wanted to get at with all this.

“Like every couple? Why is this relevant?”

“It’s relevant because while respecting Sam’s memory is important, you might be falling into worshipping territory. I’m afraid that moving forward, you might compare every relationship you might have to your rose-tinted version of your marriage. And of course, they’re all going to fall short in comparison.”

“You’re wrong,” Meg said, because… well, she knew Billie wasn’t meaning to attack you. She was just stating the things she noticed. “Didn’t you hear me just now? I didn’t launch into an epic tale about what a magical, beautiful, special day our wedding was like!”

“Was having a big fabulous wedding important to you in the first place?”

She got her there.

“Okay, fine, it wasn’t,” she admitted. “I left most of the planning to Mary… my mother in law.”

“Why did you go through with it if it wasn’t what you wanted?”

“It was just one day,” Meg said, crossing her arms over her chest. She didn’t know why she felt so defensive all the sudden, but she did. “It made Sam happy. So it didn’t really matter.”

“Did you want to go skiing on your honeymoon?”

“I would’ve much rather preferred to have gone to some tropical paradise where my husband was forced to wear nothing but a very tight swimsuit at all times, but alas, he won the coin toss.”

Some people laughed. Billie didn’t. She never did.

“You’ve complained about the HOA in the neighborhood where you bought your house,” Billie continued. “Did you bring these concerns up to Sam? Do you like living there or do you do it out of respect for him now?”

“I do it because the house is already paid for and conditioned to my needs,” Meg said, pointing at the wheelchair underneath her. “Seriously, I don’t know what you’re getting at. No, our marriage wasn’t one hundred percent perfect all of the time, but _we were happy_!”

She didn’t realize she’d raised her voice until several of the people looked away, like they were experiencing a bad case of second-hand embarrassment. The only one who was still looking at her was Castiel, and he seemed slightly concerned.

So Meg forced herself to breath and stay put in her chair. Billie didn’t react at all to her outburst.

“I’m just trying to help you, Meg. I understand exploring these thoughts and feelings is a very painful experience, but is one that’s necessary. You need to reflect honestly about what your relationship with Sam was like, what you learned from and what it can teach you moving forwards.”

“Okay, first of all, need I remind you what the name of the group is?” Meg asked. She put as much sarcasm as she could into that question. “I didn’t divorce Sam or broke up with him; our relationship didn’t just end. He _died_. And second of all, I don’t need to reflect about jack shit, because I am not having another relationship moving forwards. It’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

“Very well. I can respect that you’re not ready for that,” Billie said, with a nod. “So maybe we should revisit this when you are. Linda?”

Linda Tran had had her arm raised for the last few minutes, completely stone-faced.

“Mr. Tran farted in the middle of the night,” she declared. “Noisily. The smell sometimes was unbearable.”

Everybody stared at her, not sure whether they were supposed to laugh or not. It was impossible to tell from her face if she was joking or not. Even Billie was a bit taken aback by her matter-of-fact tone.

“Okay…”

“It was especially bad when he’d had a food that triggered his IBS for dinner. I tried several times to make him stop, to suggest alternative foods or a healthier diet, but he was a stubborn bastard that refused to listen to his doctor, let alone his wife,” Mrs. Tran continued. “He also spent thousands of dollars from our savings in model airplanes. He was obsessed with them. He put them all around the house and he was very, very particular about how the cleaning around them should be done, to the point where he took that chore upon himself because he didn’t think I was doing it right. We had bitter disagreements on how to raise our son. I wanted to push Kevin to reach his full potential, he believed I was too strict and should ‘cut the kid some slack’.”

She drew air quotes with her fingers and Meg understood why she thought that was ridiculous. Linda Tran looked like she never in her life cut anyone any slack.

“I can name another fifty things that some days I felt like I couldn’t stand about him off the top of my head,” Linda concluded. “And if he was here, he would agree with me about maybe half of them and bring up fifty things that bothered him about me. Yet, we were married for twenty-three years and I would give my right arm to have him back, farts and all.”

“Are you… trying to make my point for me, Linda?” Billie asked.

“Yes, because you clearly haven’t been able to drive it home,” Linda replied, raising her chin with pride.

Meg found herself at the receiving end of the glare of this tiny Asian lady and she wished suddenly that she was facing an actual tiger. It would’ve been much less intimidating.

“Maybe it’s because I’m older,” Linda admitted, her tone softening ever so slightly. “Maybe it’s because I got to share a life with Mr. Tran before he was taken from me. But I understand what Billie is saying and she’s absolutely right. Pretending like you and your husband had the most wonderful relationship ever isn’t going to make you any good, girl.”

“I’m not _pretending_ …” Meg tried to protest.

“No relationship is perfect,” Linda continued. “You know what makes them work? Choosing that person every single day despite their flaws. You chose to be with Sam then. If you know in your heart that you would’ve kept choosing him every single time, then you have nothing to get defensive about.”

“I’m not…” Meg said, defensively. She stopped and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, okay, I see what you’re saying. Well played, Linda.”

“Thank you,” Linda said and threw a smug look at Billie.

“Well, okay then,” Billie said. She seemed a bit taken aback by the turn the conversation had taken and how Linda had just hijacked the point she was trying to make. “Uh… I think we’re out of time, everybody.”

People started getting up and pulling their chairs together, the usual. Meg back up through the shelves of the library and practically sped out of the place. She didn’t know why she felt like she was drowning now.

“Meg!” Castiel called her near the door. “Wait up! Do you want me to drive you home? It’s still cold out and your flu…”

“Do you think I wasn’t happy with Sam?”

She had no idea where those words had come from. She had no idea why she was asking Castiel, of all people, or why. She just… had been completely thrown by Billie and Linda’s reasoning.

And by the confusion in Castiel’s face, it was very like that he wouldn’t have an answer to give her.

“I… I mean, you told me you were happy,” he pointed out. “I have no reason to doubt your word.”

That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. Then again, she wasn’t even sure what answer would satisfy her at that point. She turned the chair away and reached the street. She needed to breathe the open air.

“Meg…”

“Can you… be quiet for five minutes?” she asked. “I just need to think for five minutes.”

Any other person would’ve been offended by that request, but not Castiel. Never Castiel. He simply walked by her side while Meg chewed on the myriad of thoughts flooding her brain.

She walked past the bus stop, past the little Italian restaurant where they’d had lunch at one point. She didn’t know there was a park and a playground just around the corner, but when she saw it, she headed there for some reason, with Castiel following close behind her.

It was empty, of course, because no self-respecting parent would let their children play out in the middle of the night in a cold January night, but still, there was something eerie about how silent it seemed.

It was perfect. She stopped there. Castiel stopped a few steps behind her but didn’t say anything.

“We _were_ happy,” Meg stated.

“I don’t think Billie meant to insinuate that you weren’t,” Castiel told her and that was a very rational thing to say. Too bad Meg’s emotions were the furthest thing from rational at that moment.

“You know what my New Year’s resolution was before we got married?” Meg asked him, and didn’t give him time to make a guess: “I resolved to be the best wife I could be for Sam. Because I loved him. Because I couldn’t believe that he was choosing to marry me.”

“That’s… a very noble aspiration. And I’m sure Sam appreciated it.”

Meg breathed in. It was slow and shaky. She didn’t know why she was crying, but she couldn’t stop it.

“Yeah, I’m sure he did,” she said. “I wanted to be good enough for him, because I had never been. I had always been this wild thing that kept running from him, and he dated… so many good girls. Jess, Sarah, Madison… any of them would’ve made a better wife than me. Any of them could’ve made him effortlessly happy, but he wanted me for some incomprehensible reason.”

“Because… he loved you,” Castiel pointed out.

“I know he did!” Meg shouted. She was tired of people saying meaningless platitudes like that, she was tired of people affirming her feelings were valid or whatever. She just wanted to let them out and scream forever. “I loved him too, I always did! That’s not the point!”

Castiel didn’t get offended she shouted. He simply stepped around her wheelchair to stand in front of her, with his hands in his pockets. He slowly got down on his knee, just so they could talk face to face.

“What _is_ the point then?”

Meg had to suppress a couple of random sobs in order to answer him.

“I don’t know if that was enough,” she confessed. “I don’t know if it mattered. When we first met I knew that I loved him a whole lot, but we didn’t… have the same goals, you know? He always wanted what we ended up having, the big house, the picket white fence and whatnot. I wanted to travel, I couldn’t imagine settling down.”

“But you did in the end,” Castiel pointed out, narrowing his eyes with confusion.

“Because no matter how much I pushed him, Sam kept coming back to me,” Meg said. “In the end, I just… accepted that no one was going to love me like he did, that my life would be better for sharing it with him. So I decided I needed to be the person Sam wanted me to be, because if I wasn’t, someone else would be.”

“Meg, no,” Castiel frowned. He tilted his head a little and his eyes shifted to the side, like he did sometimes, but he immediately turned his attention back to her. “I… he loved you for who you always were and…” He stumbled upon his words, like he realized that they would sound empty to Meg’s ears. “You never told him this?”

“What was I supposed to tell him?” Meg asked. “That I was so sure he was going to meet some smart sophisticated lawyer one day and run away with her? That I was going to fake it ‘til I made it? That I… kept so many things quiet… I told you I lied to him about wanting kids one day. I also lied about wanting the big stupid wedding and the big stupid house, because I wanted him happy. And I thought it eventually would make me happy too.”

“But you weren’t,” Castiel said, comprehension dawning in his eyes. “And it didn’t.”

“I just… felt like I couldn’t still be me, but then again, I always thought _me_ wasn’t that great to being with, so it was okay if I let that Meg hide away, it was worth it for the life we were building,” she explained. “But sometimes she still came out and she was _angry_ that Sam had taken her to that fucking neighborhood to live that fucking apple pie life. _I_ was angry, sometimes.”

Her voice trailed off. 

Castiel stared at her with something akin to pity. He lowered his hands and placed them on hers. Meg hadn’t realized that she had been clenching them in fists until she had to open them so he could hold them.

“I was angry when Jack was sick,” he confessed. “I was angry because it was so hard to watch him suffer, to watch him struggle. His treatments made him even sicker. I had to go pick him up from school often, I ended up several thousands of dollars into debt. One particular night… a particularly bad night, he’d stayed up all night vomiting. He vomited all over the bathroom, not just the toilet, and he apologized over and over for it while I assured him over and over again that it was fine, that it wasn’t his fault, that I’d clean it later. When it finally passed, I helped him into a pair of clean pajamas and helped him get into bed. He fell asleep right away and I stayed on the door, watching him silently and I… I had the worst thought I’d ever had.”

“What was it?”

“I thought: _‘Why won’t he die already?’_ ”

“Cas!”

“It was my sixth night with little to no sleep,” Castiel clarified, as if he needed to. “I was exhausted and worried all the time. That level of constant preoccupation does something to your emotions, it wears them off, and I felt empty. It was a blunt, insensitive thought, but I had it and I immediately felt guilty for having it. It didn’t mean I hated Jack. It didn’t mean I wanted him to die. But I was also so angry and so tired…”

He placed a hand on her cheek and smiled reassuringly. What he’d just told her… Meg was amazed that he had. With the absolute trust that it wouldn’t change what she thought about him, and even if it did, he’d still believed it was worth telling her about it.

“I have no doubt in my mind you loved Sam with all of your heart and were happy with him,” he stated. “I also have no doubt that sometimes you resented him for what you felt like you had to give up in order to commit to him. Those two things might seem contradictory, but… death is full of contradictions. And so is life. And we just… have to accept them sometimes.”

He moved closer to her, pulling her in so their foreheads would touch. Meg couldn’t escape his gaze now, not that she would want to.

“You’re not a bad person for the things you feel, Meg.”

“Aren’t I?” she asked and gave him a sad chuckle. She sighed and closed her eyes, melting into the warmth of his touch. She felt good there. She felt safe. “I… I guess that sometimes, at night, I wonder. If I would’ve been able to deal with that tiny, angry Meg or if it would’ve eventually driven us apart. I think that’s why Billie’s question made me so upset.”

“I don’t know what would have happened either,” Castiel said. He ran his fingers through her hair, tucking a lock behind her ear. “But it hardly matters now, does it?”

Meg breathed in the clean air, the smell of Castiel’s cologne, of the snow in his clothes. In a moment more, she would tell him to take her home. He would joke about how his knees had frozen. They would laugh together and listen to some music while he drove her there in the cold, dark night. That memory of his company would make her feel less alone when she faced her empty home.

But for now, it was enough to just stay there, holding his hands, for just a little longer.


	17. Epiphany

Sam was acting weird during the following week. He took to never leaving Castiel’s side during that time. He would float around the house for hours at a time, just sulking somewhere or hanging around in the corners.

“You’re turning into one of those mopey ghosts that moan and scare the hell out of people,” Castiel pointed out to him. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Is Meg alright?”

“She’s fine,” he would say and then he either disappeared or just looked into the distance with a deep melancholy.

He definitely knew how to end conversations, Castiel would give him that.

“Are you staying here because of what Meg said about being angry with you?”

“No,” Sam stated, by the way that he looked away made Castiel believe he was definitely not being truthful about it.

“Well, you can stay here was long as you want, you know that.”

“Thanks, Cas.”

It was like having a roommate that sometimes stay up until the late hours of the night watching TV and didn’t go through his food, but did complain a lot whenever Castiel ate anything he considered less than healthy.

“Are you sure about that?”

“It’s Brussel sprouts!”

“You’re a putting a lot of cheese in them…”

“Are you really going to make me Google the benefits of Parmesan cheese before you let me eat them in peace?” Castiel asked. He was trying not to lose his patience, he really was, but he was really understanding why Meg had said that Sam was a health freak at times.

“Listen, I’m just saying that putting all of that in the Brussel sprouts defeats the purpose of eating Brussel sprouts…”

“Well, I’m not going to stop,” Castiel declared. “Because I can’t use salt and they’re Brussel sprouts.”

“Alright, fair enough,” Sam conceded. He was quiet for about ten seconds before he asked: “So, are you going to get rid of all that ramen you have in the upper cabinet? Because that is a mountain of sodium…”

Castiel didn’t know why he picked up the phone and called Meg. It wasn’t like he could ask her to come pick up her dead husband.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Not much. I just wanted to check up on you.” Castiel eyed Sam, who was sitting on the counter and pointedly not looking at him. It was so odd to have a conversation with Meg and not have Sam give him pointers or orders of what he needed to do or say. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, thanks. I’m… seeing an individual therapist on Wednesday, actually.”

“Are you?” Castiel asked, a little surprised.

“I talked to Billie and she gave me some recommendations. Referrals. I don’t even know what they would be, really.”

“What prompted you to do it?”

“I don’t know.” There was a pause on the line. “I just realized that every time I have an emotional outburst I kind of unload it on you and that can’t be healthy for either of us.”

“Meg, you know I don’t mind listening to you…”

“Yes, yes, you’re the most awesome and supportive person in the world, Clarence, I get it,” she said. He could practically picture her rolling her eyes. He smiled. He still had no idea why she called him “Clarence” but he couldn’t say he was annoyed by it at all. “And I do appreciate that you listen to me and whatnot, but you know… maybe I should treat you like an actual friend who has the right to not always want to hear about my bullshit and get an actual shrink instead to help me fix my head.”

Castiel didn’t mean to laugh, but she didn’t seem bothered by the fact that he did.

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” he said. “Maybe they will convince you to finally quit your shitty call-center job.”

“Hey, I have a ladder on my garage that I don’t really use. Do you want it?”

“I, uhm… I don’t think so?” Castiel stammered, a little thrown off by the abrupt change in the conversation. “Why?”

“So you can use to get off my back.”

Castiel couldn’t help it. He burst into laughter and a few moments later, Meg did the same thing.

"Very well, I probably had that one coming," Castiel admitted.

"You absolutely did," Meg said. She made a pause. "But I'll think about it. Maybe I'll come up with something better to do. Maybe I can ask the shrink about it!"

"Sounds like a terrific idea."

They ended the call and Castiel sat down at the table with his parmesan-covered Brussel sprouts.

It took him no time at all to notice Sam sitting down on the floor, his long legs folded against his chest and a gloomy expression on his face.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong now?"

"Nothing's wrong," Sam insisted. "Meg is doing fine. Better than she has been in a while. She's laughing, she's…"

He interrupted himself with a sigh and looked away. Castiel bit into his dinner and chewed, pensively.

"That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Yes, I guess," Sam said, scratching the back of his head. "It's just that I didn't expect to find out that Meg was better off without me."

Castiel put down his fork immediately.

"Who said that?"

"Meg. She didn't use as many words, but that was the gist of what she told you, right?"

"You're being ridiculous," Castiel told him. "Of course she doesn't think that. You know how much she misses you. You've seen it."

"Yeah, but..."

"Sam, you didn't know Meg wasn't entirely happy with the life you had because she hid it from you," Castiel said.

"Exactly!" Sam threw his hands in the air. "And I keep thinking, what the hell could I have differently so she didn't feel that she had to hide that from me? She was the best wife, life partner, anyone could have asked for, but was I a shitty husband?"

Castiel was in no way qualified to be a couples’ counselor, and even if he was, him being in love with Meg would certainly make this practice of him very, very unethical, but he still tried to look at it objectively.

"No," Castiel said. "I don't think you were."

"She felt like she couldn't be honest with me, how was that not shitty on my part? That I made her feel like she had to change everything about herself to be with me?" Sam continued asking. "Maybe I just... I just pushed this entire happy, nuclear family thing on her because I was trying to prove a point."

"What point?"

"That I wasn't like my dad."

Castiel put down his fork.

"Umh..."

"He was always fighting with my mom," Sam said, with a sigh. "When we were kids, sometimes he would leave the house for days on end. Eventually one day, he just... never returned. Years later, we found out he'd got together with this other lady in Michigan and we had another brother we didn't even know about."

"I'm sorry…"

"He didn't even show up for my funeral!" Sam exclaimed. He took a deep breath. "My half-brother Adam, I mean, not my dad. He passed away from a stroke before I was out of college."

"I’m really sorry to hear that, Sam," Castiel said. He felt nervous all of the sudden. "How does that…?"

"I promised myself I wouldn't be a loser like him," Sam groaned. "I promised myself that I was going to get married and have a wonderful wife and a perfect house and great children that I would never leave behind. I worked myself to the bone so we could be comfortable and Meg didn't have to work if she didn't want to. I was so obsessed with getting that picture perfect life, I never considered maybe that wasn't what Meg wanted."

"You were trying your best," Castiel said. He wasn't sure why these emotional heart-to-heart talks were so easy with Meg but made him feel so awkward with Sam.

"You know what's the worst part?" Sam continued. It was as if he wasn’t even hearing anything that Castiel was saying. "That Meg was right. Any of my other girlfriends would've been better suited for what I wanted than she was. They were all god girls from good families looking to settle down into a happy, normal life, but I decided to try to push a bohemian adventurous artist peg into a housewife hole. No wonder she felt frustrated. No wonder she resented me."

"If you knew... or... suspected that wasn't the life Meg would've chosen for herself if it wasn't for you, why did you push it?"

Sam reflected on this question for a long time. When he looked up at him, with such sadness in his hazel eyes, Castiel guessed his answer before he even said it:

"Because, I loved her. That first night I met her at this party; she had bleached her hair blonde and she was dancing on table tops. She stumbled and literally fell into my arms. She called me her hero and bought me a beer for 'rescuing her'. And we got to talking. I had just found out about Adam and I was mad at my dad. She just listened to me and then we… we toasted. To our lives. 'They might not be perfect,' she said. 'But they're ours'." Sam laughed, like the mere memory of it was enough to pull him out of his funk. "She had this way to make me feel understood. You know what I'm talking about?"

Castiel thought about how she’d just listened to him when he'd told her about Luc and Kelly and Jack's illness… and well, he got exactly what Sam was talking about.

"Those other girls; I told them too, about what I wanted and why," Sam explained. "And some of them said they understood, but I don't know if they really did. Meg's mom had run away and her father wasn't all up here. He ended up in jail... I don't know, I felt like we were damaged in the same way. And maybe that's why I kept choosing her through the years. She's my best friend. She was always my best friend."

Castiel nodded. He really hoped all of this was helping Sam, more than anything. He realized, he really didn't want to know. He didn't care when Meg talked about Sam, but for some reason, it made him uncomfortable when it was the other way around. Like he was getting more insight into Meg's life and what she wanted from an illicit source, in a way.

He wanted her to tell him everything. He wanted her to trust in him enough to do that.

"It's hard to see her become your best friend now," Sam concluded with a sigh.

"That's not…" he started protesting, but what was there to protest? The cat was out the bag. Sam knew how Castiel felt about Meg and he really hoped she really cared about him as much as everyone kept insisting she did.

Despite, the phrase, coming from Sam, took on a completely different, loaded meaning that he wasn't sure he wanted to think about.

"Tomorrow's our wedding anniversary," Sam pointed out with a sigh. "Meg's going to the cemetery. It's not going to be easy on her, so maybe call her? It doesn't have to be tomorrow, but maybe the day after?"

"I will," Castiel said. He didn't tell him he was planning on doing exactly that anyway. He suspected Sam knew it already.

* * *

Meg thought she was going to spend her entire wedding anniversary crying, like she had the previous three years, but honestly, when the day finally arrived, she cried a bit in the morning, a bit in front of Sam's tomb and then she was fine for the rest of the day. Well, not fine, but not feeling sad to the point that she felt paralyzed, like it had happened back in July.

She visited the cemetery three times a year, on their anniversary, on Sam's birthday and on the anniversary of his death. She felt that was more than enough. If she hadn't limited herself, she would have spent that first year clinging to his tombstone, like some sort of overdramatic Goth heroine.

This time, however, while she sat in front of his grave and placed a single tulip on it (it wasn't rose season just yet), she didn't feel like doing big gestures of pain and grief.

Instead, she felt like talking to him. She talked to him all the time when she was home alone and she didn't know if he could hear her. He most likely couldn't and she was just actually talking to herself, which was maybe the reason the change in location prompted her to say some things she never could have said at home.

"I'm thinking I should have been more honest with you," she said out loud. “I kept a lot of things quiet in the name of peace. I know you weren’t that sort of person, but I feared that if I complained, if I even hinted at not being happy, that it would drive you away. That’s what I was scared of the most, you know? Losing you. And then I went and lost you anyway.”

She made a pause to blow her nose and sob a little. The cemetery was quiet and lonely, but even if he wasn’t, she felt like this was probably the one place in the world where she was allowed to cry for seemingly no reason.

“You know what I’m sure of, though? That no matter what happened, you would always have been important to me. I always would’ve missed you. I miss you like hell right now.” She moved closer to the grave, kissed her fingers and then pressed them against his name on the stone. “Happy anniversary, babe.”

That was really all she could say. She backed away from the gravestone and headed for the gates. Benny, the paratransit driver, told her she was the last person he had to drop off, so he would wait for her. Perhaps that had been another impulse to get her to be done with her chat with Sam sooner.

In any case, he didn’t seem to be in any rush. He was leaning against the truck, calmly smoking a cigarette.

“All done?” he asked her when she came up to him.

“Yes.” Meg took out her cellphone and opened the app to “book” the trip. “Let’s go home.”

Crowley was blowing up her phone even before they were in the near vicinity of the neighborhood.

“Where are you?” he demanded to know.

“Why? My shift isn't until tonight.”

“Didn’t you read the messages I sent you?”

Meg was tempted to say that no, of course she hadn’t read the damn texts and Crowley would know that if he only checked his phone. Her boss didn’t give her any time.

“It doesn’t matter. Cecily is sick and I need you to cover for her.”

“Are you going to pay me the extra hours?”

“Well, I would have if you were covering her entire shift, but it started an hour ago.”

“Wait, who’s picking up the calls?”

“You are,” Crowley said. “So you better get started.”

He hung up before she could protest.

“Can you believe this little shit?” Meg asked.

“Bosses are a pain in the ass,” Benny said, shaking his head, not even trying to pretend that he hadn’t heard the conversation. “But you know what they say. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

“I thought that was what they say about men.”

“I always thought they meant women,” Benny said, which, admittedly, made Meg laugh a little.

Well, anyway, what she was going to do? She could argue with Crowley about the extra hours later. She rolled through her garden and up into her home, turned her computer and put on her headphones to get started.

It was a slow day, luckily. Just some missed connections and refunds that could be sold easily, not many people calling to ask for help.

Well, not until Karen. Meg didn’t know if her name was Karen but she definitely sounded like one. Karen’s problem was that her and her husband had been left stranded at their hotel when their driver had left after they failed to come down to the lobby fast enough. They’d ended up paying for a taxi and, according to Karen, they had been dramatically on the edge of losing their flight.

“I just cannot believe he was so rude as to not wait for us!” Karen complained. “I want to fill a complaint against him and I want to know what disciplinary measures will be taken against him!”

“Alright, ma’am, I just need to ask you some questions,” Meg said. She was really only half-listening, because Karen had taken her time to get to the point of the story and god, was she an annoying bitch. “How long did you say the driver waited for you after he announced himself at the reception?”

Karen went quiet for a few seconds, which was never a good sign.

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything!” she exclaimed in the end. She didn’t sound pleased at all. “He was our driver; he should have waited for us for as long as we needed him to!”

Meg immediately saw red flags raising in her mind. She opened the computer to check that particular vehicle’s itinerary on the GPS and…

“Ma’am, it says here the driver waited for you at the hotel for forty-five minutes?”

Karen was stunned into silence, but unfortunately, not for long.

“Where?!” she yelled. “Where does it says that?!”

“Ma’am, please, there’s no need to raise your voice…”

“Are you calling me a liar?!”

“Not at all, ma’am, I’m just telling you that the driver did wait for you, for a considerable amount of time and…”

“Well, we weren’t ready! He should have waited a little longer!”

“… he was going to make the other passengers he had to take to the airport late…”

“This is ridiculous! Your service is terrible and we will never utilize it again, do you hear me?! I want to speak with your manager…”

She kept ranting and ranting on for fifteen minutes straight. Meg merely raised her eyes at the ceiling, sighing tiredly. Karen’s voice was giving her a headache. This wasn’t even supposed to be her shift. She would’ve much rather been upstairs, in her studio, finishing the painting she was making for Castiel…

Big revelations didn’t seem to come in great, transcendental moments. Just a small epiphany that she couldn’t fight off once it was right there in front of her face.

She would much rather be doing something else, anything else. She could be doing anything else other than listening to the clearly deranged and entitled woman speak. She wanted to do anything else.

She wanted to paint. She had forced herself to do it those days, hating every second of the process because she felt it was mediocre and she had lost her abilities after so many years. But she’d still had much preferred to play with colors and shapes, to experiment with the different angles of Jack’s face, and damn, she was sure she was getting somewhere with the painting, somewhere good, somewhere she could be proud of for her effort and present to Cas without feeling embarrassed for it.

But she wasn’t going to get there if she kept sitting there and listening to Karen spew her bullshit non-stop.

“… are you listening to me?!”

“Of course I am, ma’am,” Meg said. “Thank you.”

Her words seemed to completely throw Karen in for a loop.

“You’re… welcome?” she said.

“I have processed your refund,” Meg informed her, even though Crowley’s instructions were to give refunds only as a last resource. “You should be able to see it soon in your credit card statement.”

“Well, that’s a start,” Karen said, much more calm now that the money issue was back on her. “I would also like to receive an apology.”

“Absolutely not, it was your own fucking fault for not going to the lobby as soon as you were called, you stupid bitch.”

“What did you say?!”

“Don’t bother calling my boss. I will have quitted by the time you reach him.”

She ended the call just as Karen began yelling something else that Meg was simply not interested in hearing. Because fuck her. And fuck Crowley. And fuck this job. Castiel had been right all along.

She had so many things better to do.

Crowley didn’t take it well when she called to announce her resignation.

“What are you talking about? You can’t quit! You won’t be able to find a job anywhere else!” he screamed out. “Not with your… condition!”

Meg appreciated that he didn’t call her what he was probably actually thinking.

“I literally could not give less of a fuck, Crowley.”

“You can’t quit in the middle of your shift!”

“It’s not my shift, remember, you cheap moron?” she reminded him. “And even if it was, so what? You’re paying me peanuts. I will make more begging on the street for change to strangers that pity my ‘condition’ than staying with you.”

“Listen, if money is the problem…”

“Money was never the problem!” Meg replied. “I’m quitting.”

“Well… then I’ll consider this your two-weeks’ notice…”

“Nope. Effective immediately.”

“Are you serious? You’re being so unprofessional! This will look terrible in your resume…!”

“Fucking spare me, Crowley. I’m not a starving college student you can bully into staying,” she spat. “I said, I _quit_.”

She ended the call and immediately blocked his number when he tried calling her again.

And she felt… dammit, she felt amazing. Lighter. Victorious. She threw her head back and laughed like a madwoman in the middle of her living room.

She then turned her chair and reached for the stairs lift.

She couldn’t wait to see the look con Castiel’s face when she showed him what she’d been doing.


	18. Celebration

“You did what now?”

“Hey, I thought you would be happy for me!” Meg scolded him. “You’re the one who was always on my case about how this job was soul-sucking and whatnot.”

Castiel tried to put his astonishment aside, if only because she sounded so incredibly elated while she regaled him with the story of how she’d screamed at Crowley on the phone and how she’d called one of the clients “a bitch”.

“I was, but… what are you going to do now?” he asked her. “You seem like the kind of person who easily goes crazy if they don’t have something to do. Forgive my bluntness.”

“No, you’re absolutely right,” she stated. “I’m actually painting again.”

“Really? That’s… Meg, that’s amazing. I’m so happy to hear that.”

He didn’t have to feign his enthusiasm this time. Those were some amazing new that she was sharing. Amazing progress she was making in reclaiming who she used to be, what made her happy then and what made her happy now. Sam wasn’t around, so he couldn’t be sure what he thought about this, but he was certain he was just as happy.

“Yup. Bess Fitzgerald says she’s having an auction for charity by the end of next month and asked me if I could contribute with some paintings. I figured why not.”

“That sounds wonderful, Meg. I’m truly so happy to hear it.”

“Yeah.” She hesitated for a second. “Umh, listen… is there like… a piece of furniture or something that you could donate?”

"Yes, I'm sure I can find something," Castiel said, a little surprised. "But your neighbors surely have other things to donate as well?"

"Yes, the thing is... Bess told me to ask to people if they could participate or donate something for the night in question."

"I see," Castiel said, still trying to figure out where this was going.

"You're the only... people I have," she explained. "Man, that's embarrassing and not needy at all, huh?"

She tried to pass it off as a joke, but she sounded extremely uncomfortable making that confession to Castiel.

And he understood that completely. He loved his siblings, but there were times in his life where the only person he felt he could really count on or call a friend was Balthazar.

The moment he thought of Balthazar, a light went up in his head.

"Maybe that could be solved if you went out more," he suggested. "Recently Balthazar and his girlfriend Rowena... you met them at Christmas, remember?"

"Rowena is a hard character to forget," Meg stated, and well, she was right about that. Castiel was certain that if she hadn't this dramatic, great personality, Balthazar wouldn't have spent all those months with her.

"Well, they invited me to come to the theater with them and even mentioned that I should invite you," Castiel said. "I wasn't sure if you'd want to come, but they told me they have a balcony that should have enough space for your chair."

"The theater," Meg repeated.

"Yes, and we're going for dinner afterwards. I know this might not sound like your thing..."

"When is this?"

"Thursday. I'm not sure why, the tickets must have been at a special price or..."

"Cas, you know what day Thursday is, right?"

The question sounded more than a bit tautological in Castiel's ears until he happened to glance at the calendar on his fridge.

"Oh, it's... it's Valentine's Day!"

"Yeah, I think your friends invited us into a double date," Meg said, laughing.

Castiel felt the blood rising to his head, utterly embarrassed. Meg seemed to be taking it well, but really, that didn't help much with how much of an idiot he felt at that precise moment.

"Meg, I didn't mean... I hope you realize that I wasn't trying to..."

"It's fine, Cas," she assured him, with another chuckle. "If there's anyone else you'd like to invite to what seems like it's going to be a very romantic outing..."

"No!" Castiel exclaimed and now he had to worry that he had sounded too overly eager. "I mean, there isn't anyone else. But also, I don't want to ask you out on a date."

“You know; a girl could easily get offended about a comment like that.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that!”

“You’re really not doing yourself any favors here…”

Castiel hit his face against the kitchen counter. He knew, of course, that she was pulling his leg for how clumsily he’d put himself in that situation, but at the same time…

“I don’t mean to say that I wouldn’t invite you to… something like this. That I wouldn’t… ask you out on a date,” he said, cringing. He was hyperaware of exactly how awkward he sounded.

And it didn’t help that Meg suddenly stopped laughing.

“Oh?”

“It’s just that… I know you… wouldn’t accept even if I did,” he said.

“What makes you say that?”

Castiel’s heart skipped a beat and suddenly the part of his brain that seemed designed to formulate words and whatnot shut off. He found himself incapable of finding a coherent thought in his mind, much less saying it out loud.

“I just… I mean…”

“I know what you mean, Cas,” she said.

There was a pause in which Castiel felt like all the blood that had rushed to his head was abandoning him. He was sick and his knees were giving in and dammit, why he’d say anything? He should’ve kept his mouth shut…

“On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with a couple of friends going to the theater, right?” Meg pointed out in the end.

Castiel gave himself a second. He was dizzy because of the lack of oxygen.

“No. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Okay, so… what time should I be there?”

Castiel’s heart went from not beating at all to going at a hundred miles per hour.

“Wait, really?”

“I don’t know if I ever told you, but I was a bit of a theater geek back in college,” she stated. “Well, I took a class to gain extra credits, in any case. I painted some of the backdrops but got kicked out eventually.”

“There’s a story there, isn’t it?”

“Yup. And I’ll tell you all about during dinner after the play if we ran out of topics with Balthazar and Rowena.”

Castiel didn’t think it was possible for them to run out of topics. But the day felt suddenly brighter knowing that she was joining them.

* * *

Meg looked at herself in the mirror and grimaced.

She didn’t really feel comfortable in any of her dresses. Not only did they remind her of the awkward dinner parties she’d had to attend with Sam, it turned out most of them didn’t even fit her anymore. Who would’ve thought that sitting on her ass all day everyday would’ve made her gain weight?

That wasn’t fair. Her physiotherapist had suggested some activities and gyms with accommodations she could go to. It was just that she hadn’t really bothered to try any of them. She also hadn’t seen her physiotherapist in a while, which was probably not very healthy for her.

Barring the dresses that she simply couldn’t wear, the one that did fit her was going to be a pain in the ass to wear because it was long and the skirt could get caught between her wheels.

She simply had nothing appropriate to wear to the theater, dammit.

So, after a while, Meg finally admitted defeat and called Bess Fitzgerald.

“Oh, the girls and I were planning a Valentina shopping trip today!” Bess said when Meg told her about her problem. “It would be lovely for you to join is!”

“Wait, what girls?” Meg asked, apprehensive. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry about anything, we’ll pick you up!”

So no more than an hour later (if this shopping trip wasn’t already planned, Bess was very good at organizing things), they showed up on Rita Johnson’s Volkswagen and honked for her to come out.

Meg was starting to regret quitting her job.

“Is there a special occasion you’re shopping for, Meg?” Layla Rourke asked her, with her smile all super kind and whatnot.

Meg explained the situation: that she was going out with a friend and she had nothing to wear.

“This friend wouldn’t happen to be that very handsome guy that has been coming to help you around the house, right?” Rita asked.

“Amelia had said he is very kind and very hard-working,” Layla added.

“Oh, you must absolutely invite him to the auction!” Bess exclaimed. “The more, the merrier!”

“I’ll… see if he’s free,” Meg said.

She felt awkward as all get out. She had barely interacted with these women when Sam was alive, let alone in recent years, but they all kept talking and joking with her like she’d never become a voluntary recluse and ignored all their previous attempts to strike a friendship with her.

But maybe simply not acknowledging it was the best way to deal with it.

“Valentine shopping” consisted on them hitting some lingerie stores, which was even more awkward as they complimented how they all looked in the skimpy outfits. Rita and Layla didn’t buy anything, but as they were leaving one of them, Meg noticed that Bess was stopping quickly by the counter and sliding her credit card to the cashier. Bess saw her glancing in her direction and her face became extremely red, but Meg wasn’t going to judge her.

She would have congratulated her, except that she was sure Bess would’ve burst into flames from the embarrassment if she did.

They bought less “racy” gifts for their husbands, like ties and car tools, very practical stuff. Meg knew that if she had been buying for Sam, she would’ve hit the bookstore or the record store. He was a snob that collected vinyls and rare editions, but then again, that at least made it easy to shop for him.

She also wouldn’t have passed up on the sexy lingerie.

Again, no one acknowledged this awkward fact except Bess.

“This must be strange for you,” she told her. Layla and Rita were walking ahead of them, their arms around each other’s waist as they laughed about something, but Bess had made the effort to keep walking by Meg’s side. She appreciated that. It was hard enough feeling like the odd one out already. “Is it the first Valentine Day’s you spend with someone other than Sam?”

The phrasing of the question was odd because Meg had spent plenty of Valentine Day’s with people other than Sam, for sure. But she knew what Bess meant.

“It’s not like that. We’re going out as friends.”

Bess tilted her head slightly and Meg knew immediately she didn’t believe her. Couldn’t blame her for it either. If Meg was going to be honest (and she really, really didn’t feel like it) she knew exactly what it looked like.

“Meg,” Bess said and placed her hand on Meg’s shoulder. “You don’t have to feel guilty. I’m sure Sam would want you to be happy.”

Meg could’ve got angry. Could’ve asked this random woman why she presumed to know what Sam would and wouldn’t have wanted for her. She could have snapped and pushed her hand away and called a paratransit to come pick her up.

That was definitely her gut reaction. But Mia, her new therapist, said that anger was a first emotional reaction and she shouldn’t trust it lest she said something she could regret. Instead, she needed to take a deep breath and go with her second reaction.

Which was still to make a sarcastic remark, but at least she didn’t blow up at this poor woman who was trying to be nice to her.

“I’m sure Sam wouldn’t appreciate me having a boyfriend. We weren’t that kind of couple.”

She wasn’t expecting Bess to understand that joke, but damn, this pastor’s kid married to a fucking dentist was full of surprises.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to say you were!” she said, opening her eyes wide and shaking her head. “Though, you know, if you had been, I wouldn’t judge you…”

“Girls, come on!” Rita shouted at them from the door of a clothing store. “We gotta get Meg all dolled up for her date!”

Meg gave up protesting that it wasn’t a date.

“Welcome, ladies!” a salesman with a big smile and a tag that identified him as “Guy” came up to them. “Well, don’t you all look lovely?”

They all giggled and Meg couldn’t believe they were falling for that cheap flattery.

“Guy, if you would be so kind…” Layla went behind Meg’s chair and pushed her closer to him before she could protest about her touching her fucking chair. “Our friend here has a very special night coming up and she has to look amazing.”

Guy’s smile became tense around the edges of his lips.

“Oh. Umh… very well,” he said and he leaned down as if he thought Meg was deaf on top of it. “Are you… going to need special assistant, ma’am?”

Well, at least he’d asked her directly.

“No, but I am going to need your biggest changing room.”

This entire ordeal suddenly reminded her why she did all her shopping online and just prayed that the clothes that came fit her. Changing was already a fucking ordeal without a constant chorus of “Come on, Meg!” and “We want to see you, Meg!” outside.

But at least they served to shoo Guy awake every time he came back to remind them, in a very patronizing tone, that one of their female staff would be more than happy to help Meg out, if she so requested it.

“She’s doing just fine, thank you,” Bess assured him. “We’ll call you if we need anything.”

She had the same problem with the skirts and the wheels, but then Rita had the galaxy brain idea of bringing her some palazzos and it was like the clouds parted in the sky.

“Okay, these aren’t bad,” Meg had to admit, looking at herself in the mirror.

“They are spectacular!”

“Oh, you’re going to need a cute top to go with those!”

In total, she bought three blouses and four different palazzos, at a price that she found exorbitant, but whatever. She hadn’t treated herself in ages. This felt… strangely satisfying.

“Ladies, we need to go for lunch to celebrate!” Rita said.

“What are we celebrating?” Meg asked, still a little dazzled by how happy and preppy they all sounded and how they had showered compliments on her with every item she tried on.

“I don’t know!” Layla shrugged. “Did something extraordinary happened to you lately?”

“Well, I quit my job a couple of days ago.”

The three of them stared at her, stunned. Obviously they were thinking about why she’d spent so much money on clothes if she was currently unemployed and Meg braced herself for a speech about financial responsibility when…

“There you go!” Bess said. “Let’s celebrate that!”

They took her to a restaurant outside of the mall that thankfully had a ramp (had they looked it beforehand or had it been a lucky coincidence?) and ordered margaritas for everybody despite not even being two in the afternoon.

“To friendship!” they toasted.

“To not having to deal with your asshole boss anymore!”

“To the kids finally being old enough for extra-curricular activities!” Rita said. She was drinking virgins because she still had to drive, but Layla and Bess were definitely a bit tipsy. They laughed so loud they attracted the attention of the people in the tables surrounded them, but nobody told them anything.

Meg was acutely aware of how they looked, though. Four white ladies with a bunch shopping bags around their feet, drinking and laughing. They were the image of privilege and carefreedom. There was no reason in the world why she should feel unhappy at a time like that, and truth be told, she didn’t.

And she didn’t, honestly. But she also didn’t feel comfortable. She run her finger along the edges of her glass and suck on the salt for a moment while she reflected on this. For the hundredth time, she realized this wasn’t her life. She could never do this on regular basis, just go out and spend a lot of money on clothes she would wear maybe once and drink and talk and complain about her husband not doing enough chores. (Sam insisted they had a chore wheel and did his part meticulously while Meg was always the sloppy one, so she really couldn’t relate).

But this was also good. It was like trying on an item and deciding it didn’t fit or even if it did, that it wasn’t for her. It was knowing there was something else she wanted to do, even if she didn’t know yet what that was.

She would have just to keep on trying until she found one that she liked, that was all.

And honestly, this hadn’t been half as bad as she’d imagined it.

“Meg?” Bess said. “You’ve been quiet.”

Meg looked up and smiled at her.

“Just… looking for reasons to celebrate,” she said, with a calm smile. She raised her glass and smiled at them. “To… uh… new starts!”

She didn’t know exactly why she chose those words. Perhaps because they felt adequate.

They all liked them, though, because they immediately joined her toasts with a chorus of laughter:

“To new starts!”

* * *

“You don’t need the tie if you don’t want to wear it,” Balthazar said.

Castiel stared at himself in the mirror, fighting with the tie for the hundredth time. Balthazar could pull the open shirt look, but Castiel felt awkward as all hell with it, so he wasn’t going to give up the tie if it was the last thing he did.

“You’re being ridiculous, Cas,” Balthazar sighed as Castiel tried for the hundredth time to get his tie to look straight. “I promise you don’t need to work so hard to impress her. The girl is already quite taken by you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Meg and I are just friends.”

Balthazar sighed and stood up from the couch from which he’d been watching him struggle for the past half hour.

“Of course you are, of course,” he said as he took the matter in his own hands and started working the tie around his neck. “Very good friends that spend every other weekend together and go out on Valentine’s Day. Nothing at all that would make people think otherwise about the two of you.”

“You’re really not helping, Balthazar.”

“I’m just here to point out the obvious,” Balthazar said. He finished adjusting the tie, smooth over the lapels of Castiel’s suit and stepped back to give him an appreciative glance over. “Well, if darling Meg isn’t interested in taking you home after tonight, I am absolutely certain there will be plenty of ladies that will.”

“It’s not…” Castiel started protesting, but he already knew it was useless. He turned to look at himself in the mirror and winced.

It was the best of the two suits he owned, but it still looked ill-fitted on him. It made his shoulders look hunched and it was a bit big around his chest. He’d followed Balthazar’s suggestions to go with the blue tie because “it brought up his eyes, which is one of your best qualities, dear,” but at the same time, he didn’t want to think why he cared so much that the suit didn’t fit him and that the tie highlighted his eyes.

He wanted to look his best, of course, but at the same time, he didn’t want to look like he was trying to impress Meg too much.

Even though maybe a part of him did want to impress her.

Why wasn’t Sam floating around him right now to remind her why he shouldn’t care about all of this?

_What makes you say that?_

Those five little words had tormented Castiel all week. What had she meant? Had she meant it would be okay for him to ask her on an actual date sometime? Had she meant she wouldn’t be bothered or angry with him if he did that? Or that she would really consider saying yes or…?

Balthazar placed two fingers in the middle of his eyebrows and ran them up and down, as if he was trying to smooth out his frown.

“Come on, give us a smile,” he insisted. “You know, I had my doubts about this.”

“What, exactly?”

“This entire night,” Baltahzar admitted, with a shrug. “I wasn’t sure about you inviting Meg… I wasn’t sure about you maintaining a friendship with Meg at all, but I think I understand now.”

“You do?” Castiel asked, unsure about what Balthazar was saying.

“You need someone to take care of. It’s the way you show love,” Balthazar explained. “I don’t think you would still invest your time in Meg if you felt like she was abusing your good will. You’re smarter than that.”

“Thank you…?”

“And you like her,” Balthazar said. “You haven’t liked someone since, I daresay, before dear Jack left us.”

The way he said it was so soft. “Left us”. Like Jack had gone somewhere far away from home because he chose to, not because he was forced to. Castiel thought he was going to adopt that phrasing in the future.

“She’s not… I’m not…”

“Yes, yes, she’s a grieving widow and you’re not going to make any advances towards her because you’re such a gentleman and all of that,” Balthazar said, huffing as the mere idea of respecting Meg was Castiel just being silly. “Listen, I don’t know what kind of thing you have going with her. If it never blooms into a romance, I believe that will be a shame, but even if it doesn’t, I still believe you appreciate your time with her. And if you do, dear, then so do I.”

Castiel was surprised at this declaration.

“Thank you. I really do like being with her, whatever this might be.” He knew he shouldn’t, but he touched his tie with nervousness anyway. “I also feel happy for you and Rowena. I didn’t think you would find this… lasting.”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Balthazar sighed with sadness and turned around to pick up his jacket. “She’s leaving after this weekend.”

“What?” Castiel asked, surprised.

“She was invited here by a prestigious university to share her expertise for a semester. Now that semester is over and she is heading back to Scotland to finish her research,” Balthazar explained with melancholy in his voice, like Rowena had already left. “I will probably not see her again, but it was nice while it lasted.”

Castiel was shocked. He knew Balthazar very well and he knew he was averse to involving himself in long term commitments, but he had been so taken by Rowena he had thought she would be his one exception.

“Balthazar, I didn’t… I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be, darling,” Balthazar said, but his smile was extremely sad. “We have decided to just be thankful for the time we had together, because though brief, it was meaningful. I am convinced that she is the love of my life.”

Castiel blinked at him. that sort of declaration was so unlike his friend he really didn’t know how to react to it.

“If she is… then why are you just… letting her go?”

“We both agreed it would be better to leave our time together as an idyllic memory, untarnished by the corruption of time and long-term concerns.”

Well, that made a lot more sense.

“So this basically was a six-months long one-night stand,” Castiel said.

“It sounds very unromantic when you put it that way.”

It did, but at the same time, Castiel didn’t exactly feel guilty for doing it. He understood why people did that. In a way, Balthazar was doing with Rowena the same thing Meg had done with Sam: they were idealizing their relationships as perfect because it simply hadn’t had time to be ruined by harsh realities and complicated feelings.

He got that. It was tempting. But at the same time, he didn’t want it to be like that. He didn’t want to put Meg up on a pedestal as someone he could never reach or have. He wanted to keep seeing her for what she was, with all her flaws and all her baggage, and he wanted her to do the same for him. He’d told himself that it was enough to love her and be her friend, but maybe that was naïve on his part.

He also needed to keep himself grounded on the reality of what could and couldn’t eventually happen between the two.

Sam had worked as that anchor up until now, but the ghost had been gone for almost an entire week now. He hadn’t even seen him hovering around when Meg was in the support group. It was strange, but of course, he couldn’t precisely ask Meg about it.

“Anyway, I’ve planned this night to be special!” Balthazar declared. “After the play, we have reservations at this very luxurious hotel and I’ve rented the suite all the way until Monday when Rowena’s flight is leaving. We are staying in as much as we can and I’ve also brought some toys…”

“I don’t really want to hear about it,” Castiel said, opening his closet to find his overcoat.

“That’s what I’m going to miss about her the most. She’s so adventurous and willing to experiment with new instruments…”

“I’m not listening to this!” Castiel said. He put on his tanned overcoat and headed for the door as quickly as he could, with Balthazar following close behind. He was laughing and obviously very amused at Castiel’s discomfort.

“Cheer up, Cas,” he said, patting him in the shoulder. “We’re going for a night out in the town and we’re going to have two beautiful women on our arms. Really, have you ever seen two bachelor bastards as lucky as us?”

Castiel had to admit that Balthazar had a point there.


	19. Boundaries

Rowena looked spectacular, of course, with her make up on point, her wavy red hair loose over her shoulders and a deep purple dress that seemed to float around her with every step she took. Castiel felt like a third wheel in the back of Balthazar’s car all the way to the theater as they laughed and joked with each other in the front, but he was happy for his friend. He didn’t understand exactly why Balthazar had chosen to love Rowena in this spectacular but fleeting way, but if it made him happy…

Meg had insisted she could find her way to the theater by herself, so when she wasn’t outside, Castiel wasn’t too worried. There were still thirty minutes left before the play officially started and there was a long queue to get in. Rowena and Balthazar looked like celebrities, because people kept looking at them and whispering. Castiel figured he must have been like the hapless bodyguard in their mind.

Fifteen minutes to the play starting and Meg still hadn’t shown up. Castiel started to get a little nervous and check his phone, but he didn’t have any missed calls or texts from her.

“Perhaps you should find out where she is,” Rowena suggested. “Poor dear could’ve got a little lost.”

They let the people that were behind them pass before them, one by one, until they were the only ones standing outside. There were five minutes left. Castiel was calling Meg’s phone, but she wasn’t picking up.

“You should go on ahead,” he told his friends.

“Are you sure? We could miss the first act…”

“No, please, I really don’t mind,” Castiel insisted. He would never dream of ruining their spectacular final date. “I’ll just wait here for her.”

Balthazar looked up at the sky. It hadn’t snowed heavily since mid-January but it was still a chilly night and maybe they would have some rain, but it was nothing Castiel should worry about right then.

“It’s alright,” he insisted.

Balthazar took the tickets out of the inside of his jacket and handed two of them to Castiel.

“We’ll call you during the intermission if you haven’t shown up,” he said, before leading Rowena inside.

Castiel was about to call Meg one more time before he noticed a white van parking right in front of the theater. The driver stepped outside, opened the back and extended a ramp.

“Well, finally!” he heard Meg’s voice coming from the inside. He knew her well enough by then that she was extremely irritated.

“Meg,” he called out as he walked towards the van.

Meg rolled out and Castiel froze in his place.

She was wearing black wide pants (he knew they had a special name, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what they were) and a burgundy long sleeve top, with a shawl over her shoulders that seemed way too flimsy to protect her for the weather.

She had done something to her hair. Castiel didn’t know what it was, some of that witchcraft women were so apt at, but it looked especially soft and wavier than usual, framing her face with amazing delicacy. She looked beautiful even though she was clearly angry at the driver and shouting at him.

“Don’t expect a five stars from me, asshole!”

“Whatever, bitch!” the driver replied as he got back into the van.

“Fuck off!” Meg shouted back as the man was already turning on the ending and leaving.

She turned towards Castiel, rolled her eyes, but then she smiled.

She smiled and it was like the entire night was suddenly full of light.

Castiel’s stomach did a flip and the blood rushed to his years, to the point where he couldn’t even hear what Meg was telling him.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, I’m sorry I’m late, my driver was an asshole,” she repeated. “Let’s go, come on!”

The usher at the entry gave Meg a fearful look, as if they had never seen a wheelchair before.

“Umh… ma’am, we weren’t told you’d need…”

“Is there a problem? My friend called ahead and was told the theater was accessible,” Castiel asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, but… you’re in the balcony,” the usher said, growing visibly awkward. “We don’t have… elevators.”

Castiel felt embarrassed. Balthazar should have been more specific with his questions, but damn.

“Well, how do you intend to get help her to our seating then?” Castiel asked.

The usher became even more nervous.

“The play is about to start, sir…”

“Yes, which is why you should hurry,” Meg said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I’ll… I’m sure my manager would be happy to give you a refund for your tickets…”

“Are you serious right now?” Meg asked, indignant.

“We’re not accepting a refund. We have friends waiting for us to watch this play,” Castiel stated. He took a step forwards and stared at the usher right in the face. “So, I suggest you find a way.”

The usher grew slightly pale and took the radio out of his belt.

“Umh… we have a problem…”

They were making things worse for themselves, really, because the theater manager came out and also offered them a refund they refused to take. She gave them the stink eye, like they were the ones making her job harder somehow and then called a couple of ushers to help Meg up the stairs.

“Cas, don’t let them touch my chair,” Meg said as she was carried away by the ushers.

Castiel folded the chair personally, keeping eye contact with the manager the entire time, and carried it upstairs by himself.

“There you are!” Rowena exclaimed when they got inside of the balcony. “We were worried but it seems the play has been delayed for some reason.”

Castiel sit down on his chair, exchanged a look with Meg… and they both burst out laughing at the same time.

“What’s so funny?” Balthazar asked, but the lights were turned off right then. People in the orchestra clapped.

“I’ll tell you later,” Castiel promised as the curtains rose.

It was a very decent production of _Singin’ In the Rain,_ which Castiel later found out Balthazar had chosen because it was Rowena’s favorite musical. He could’ve deduced that anyway, by the way she leaned over the railing and sometimes mouthed the lyrics to the songs she liked. So she was having a great time, at least.

Meanwhile, Cas and Meg sat a little behind and laughed together at Rowena’s excited reactions. They got their heads very close to each other so they could whisper without disturbing the performers.

“What happened?”

“My usual driver apparently got the day off and this ass wouldn’t turn on his GPS. I’m really sorry about all of this.”

“No, don’t be. It’s not your fault they were pretty insufferable about bringing you here…”

“Oh, I’m not sorry about that. I’m just sorry I wasn’t here earlier so we could fight them and still get the play to start on time.”

Castiel had to muffle his laughter against the sleeve of his coat, because it wasn’t one of the parts of the play when they were supposed to laugh.

They stay put during the intermission simply because the bathroom was downstairs and well, Castiel didn’t want to leave Meg alone. Rowena and Balthazar stayed in solidarity and commiserated with them about the lack of accessibility.

“That is unacceptable! Darling, I’m so sorry. I swear they told me there wouldn’t be any problem…”

“Well, wouldn’t be the first time an establishment lies about things like this,” Meg said, shrugging. “It’s not a big deal.”

It was obviously a big deal to Balthazar, who promised he was going to make a stink about it.

“Cas kind of already did one,” Meg said, laughing. She stretched her hand and placed it on top of Castiel’s briefly. “He was my knight in shining armor.”

Castiel didn’t have time to feel embarrassed or overwhelmed by her touch, though he very much felt both of those things, because the lights went dimmer and the second act started. Which was good, because the darkness hid how red his face was, though he was certain Meg could feel his pulse going crazy. If only because she didn’t take her hand away during that time.

After the play was done (Rowena stood up to clap and scream “Bravo!” at the top of her lungs) two ushers came to help Meg down, but Balthazar insisted it should be him and Castiel who helped her carry her back down to the lobby. Meg looked over her shoulder the entire time.

“Be careful with that or I swear, you’re gonna get sued!” she threatened to the usher carrying her chair. “You hear me? It better not have a scratch on it!”

“I’m sure they’re being as careful as they can,” Rowena said.

“How would you feel if someone was carrying your legs?” Meg shot back. “Or your hair?”

Rowena scrunched up her nose and turned to the usher.

“You heard the woman. Be careful!”

Luckily, they didn’t have the same issues at the restaurant and by then, they were laughing and shaking their head at how incompetent the ushers had been.

“Oh, but the play was marvelous!” Rowena exclaimed, her dark eyes glimmering. “Thank you, sweetie!”

And she left a kiss on Balthazar’s cheek.

There was some genuine sadness and nostalgia when he turned to look at her, in a way that Castiel hadn’t really imagined. He thought, just as Balthazar had told him he knew that their relationship had a clear expiration date, that he was being hyperbolic when he said Rowena was the love of his life. But it was obvious in the way he touched her arm, or how he kept her glass full, or how he worked so hard to make her laugh…

Damn. Castiel didn’t think he’d live to see the day.

He exchanged a look with Meg, who raised her eyebrows at him as she drank from her whine. While they were distracted placing their orders, she leaned closer and whispered:

“Should we leave them alone before dessert?”

“I think that’s a good idea, yes,” Castiel said, because he was sure they would like to go up to their suite and enjoy the limited time they had.

It wasn’t that dinner wasn’t pleasant, because it definitely was, but it was still pretty obvious Balthazar and Rowena were in their own separate world. They made jokes and told stories about the places where they had been while Meg and Castiel simply exchanged glances all through the night, nodding and laughing along. They insisted they were full (and Castiel wasn’t totally lying, the food had been copious) and when the check came, Balthazar insisted on paying it full.

“This one is on me, don’t worry. One last toast, friends: to the pleasure of your company and thank you for being with us tonight!”

They toasted for the last time that night and then Balthazar handed Castiel his keys and told him to keep his car for the weekend.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!”

“That really doesn’t limit my range of possible actions,” Castiel pointed out.

Balthazar laughed and waved a hand at him before he walked away with his arm around Rowena’s waist.

“So that was fun,” Meg commented when they got into the car.

“It was,” Castiel said, still a little dazzled by everything.

“I didn’t know furniture business was going so well.”

“Oh, Balthazar has more businesses than just the store. It’s not like he was ever cheap, but he is definitely splurging.”

He told her about Rowena’s imminent return to Scotland and this seemed to surprise her.

“Really? Oh, my God, and I was mentally preparing myself for the second-hand embarrassment,” Meg said, cringing.

“What do you mean?”

“I was totally convinced Balthazar was going to get a ring out and propose to her then and there!”

In any other circumstance, Castiel would’ve attributed that to someone not knowing Balthazar very well, but after what he’d seen tonight, he couldn’t blame her for thinking it.

“It’s so… unusual for him.”

“That kind of thing is unusual,” Meg said. She spent a long time looking out of the window, with her hands clasped over her lap. “It’s a shame they’re letting it go.”

Castiel said nothing. He was sure she was, of course, thinking of Sam, even though she hadn’t mentioned him in the entire night.

And he wasn’t sure he wanted her to bring him up. His absence was making him conspicuous. He thought he would see him when they parked in front of Meg’s house, but all the saw was the Christmas lights that still hanged from the ceiling.

“Why didn’t you ask me to take out?” Castiel asked.

“Eh, I like how they look like. Plus, they drive Don nuts,” Meg added, with a laugh. “Hey, you want to come in? I don’t have a dessert, but we can have a cup of coffee.”

“That’s fine. You must be tired…” Castiel started saying, but she stretched her hand and placed it on his forearm.

“Come on in,” she insisted. “I have a gift for you.”

“A… oh,” Castiel said, shrinking a little. “I didn’t get you anything.”

“It’s not a Valentine’s gift per se,” Meg said. “It’s just something that I made for you. Come in so you can tell me if you like it?”

“I…” Castiel felt a little ambushed, but at the same time, there was no one in the world he would rather get ambushed by. “Of course.”

The night had become a lot colder since they’d left the theater, so he immediately took off his coat and handed it to Meg before he went around the car to get her chair from the trunk. She looked good with it over her shoulders, though.

He had the impression Meg moved her wheels a little faster so she would get to the door before he did. She turned on all the lights, so by the time Castiel walked into the living room, it was fully illuminated.

“What is…?” he started asking, but his words died in his mouth.

Jack was in the living room.

Well, not Jack. A portrait of Jack, so life-like and vivid that he immediately felt a lump forming in his throat. There he was, with his brown hair falling over one side, his baby blue eyes, his boyish smile and the little gap between his front teeth, in full beautiful colors that seemed to have been chosen to make him look even more youthful and healthy than he had been in the pictures of when he was that age.

“What do you think?” Meg asked. She was shifting in her chair, obviously a little uncomfortable. “Gabriel gave me some of the photographs and I thought…”

Castiel knelt in front of her and put his arms around her. He pulled her in as close as he could and held her as tight as he dared. He had never touched her like that before, but this was the only way he could think to express everything that he was feeling without breaking down entirely.

He was crying anyway and Meg just rubbed his back as he tried to pull himself together.

“It’s… it’s beautiful, Meg,” he said, wiping his cheeks. “I… I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

“Yeah?” Meg said, with an awkward laugh and raked her fingers through her hair. “I’m… I’m glad you like it.”

He more than liked it. This was, as far as he was aware, the first painting Meg did since Sam’s passing and she had used her talent to do something for him. More importantly, she’d done something for Jack. There were simply no words to tell her how moved he was by it.

“I’ve been meaning to put it in a frame and give it to you,” she told him. “But I wanted to see what you thought about it first.”

Castiel had to suppress the urge to touch it, to run his fingers through Jack’s cheek like he did when he was alive. It was a silly thought, of course, but the portrait was just so perfect…

“This is really… it’s really something, Meg,” he told her. “Thank you.”

He had no other words to express what he was feeling.

In the time it took him to wrap the painting, take it out, put it in the trunk and come back, Meg had finished making and serving two cups of coffee. She nodded when Castiel thanked her once again.

“I was half-afraid that you would think I was too… I don’t know, impertinent for doing this? Like I was somehow hijacking the memory of someone who wasn’t mine?”

“Well, you’ve shared Sam’s memory with me,” he pointed out. “I don’t see why I can’t share Jack’s with you.”

He was halfway into saying it when he realized he had invoked Sam for the first time in the night. Meg winced, but it passed very fast.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling again as she patted the empty seat by her side on the couch. “I guess that’s one way to see it.”

He sat by her side and they drank their coffee in silence, but it wasn’t awkward at all. It was peaceful. Like they were both breathing finally after a long, eventful night. And it had been, he guessed, for a Thursday.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Meg asked.

“Really?” Castiel asked her.

“I don’t know, I’m still kind of pumped,” she said, with a shrug. “And also… I don’t want you to leave just yet.”

It was such a direct way to say it, something that Castiel wasn’t really expecting at all. He was taken aback for a second and looked around.

“Sure,” he said, placing his now empty cup on the table. He eyed the green mug on the other end, but Sam was still nowhere to be seen. “I don’t want to leave either.”

There were so many feelings he couldn’t say out loud behind those words, so many things in Meg’s smile that made had him thinking the silliest things. Like how maybe this could be a new beginning for the two. Like how their carefully placed boundaries could be crossed if they moved slowly enough, like they were stalking something rare and small that could fly away if they so much as breathed too loudly.

Of course, it was all an illusion. Despite it all, he knew that it wasn’t possible.

They watched a terrible slasher movie from the eighties because it had the world “Valentine” in the title and laughed at how fake the blood looked. Then they watched another. It was getting quite late, but Castiel sent a quick text to the employees at the furniture store to let them know he’d probably be late the following day. Meg gave no indications of wanting him to leave, so they watched a third movie and it was about that time that the caffeine wore off and Castiel began to doze off.

He woke with a start when he heard a scream and it took him a second to realize it came from the woman on the screen running through the woods with a pickaxe murderer on her trail. He had no idea how they reached that point and he also wasn’t interested in knowing it, because there were so many more important things going on.

Like the fact Meg had crawled closer to him and placed her head on his chest.

All the warm feelings that had invaded him on New Year’s Eve, when the exact same thing had happened, returned, this time multiplied. He was not exactly in a comfortable position, half draped against the couch’s armrest, but he didn’t want to move for anything in the world. Maybe this was the most he was going to get. Just a random moment of peace when she was in his arms and he had the chance to let his feelings show without fear, without expectation.

He must have moved, though, or she must not have been as deeply asleep as last time, because she suddenly open her eyes and raised her head, her big brown eyes boring into him. A fleeting panic crossed her features, as if she hadn’t meant to do that or as if she was disconcerted to see him there, but before Castiel could reassure her, she was calm again.

“Cas,” she muttered.

“Yes?” Castiel answered, only to realize a second later she wasn’t calling her name.

She was making sure it was him. That it was him who was there that night with her.

She raised her hand and placed it on her cheek.

“Why are you still here?”

“I… you didn’t want me to…” he mumbled, but she was snuggling closer to him and suddenly the answer didn’t seem to matter.

Her lips pressed against his, soft like a caress, hesitant like a question. Castiel’s entire body tensed and then relaxed. When she moved away, he followed her, putting a hand on the back of her head, running his fingers through her hair as he had dreamed to do so many times as he returned the kiss.

It was everything he’d thought it be and more. He sat up so her body could be closer to his and kissed her again and again, each time hoping that she understood what he was trying to tell her, what words didn’t seem enough to express.

_You’re beautiful._

_I’ve never met anyone like you._

_I see you._

_You’re perfect._

_I love you._

Meg’s arms were around his neck, holding him close. She seemed surprised that this was happening, as if she wasn’t sure it would, but a second later she relaxed and parted her lips lightly, letting a breath pass from her to him before she nibbled his lower lip. An electric current went down Castiel’s spine.

He hadn’t even realized just how much he wanted to cross their boundaries until they were finally doing it and now they seem ridiculous they had them to begin with. He couldn’t remember why this surprised him when it just felt so easy, so natural, and the sensation of Meg’s skin under his hands, of her mouth on him, was simply surpassing all of his disbelief, all of his caution…

He didn’t even realize the room was freezing cold until he slid a hand over Meg’s stomach and found goosebumps on her skin, until she shivered and her next sigh came in the form of a white cloud escaping her lips.

A primal terror replaced all the warmness from before as he moved away.

“Meg…”

The explosion and the sound of porcelain shattering made them both jump at the same time. A soft yelp escaped Meg’s throat as they both turned surprised to look at what happened.

Sam’s green mug was gone. It hadn’t fallen from the edge of the coffee table where it’d sat before, it had simply blown up, leaving the base behind and pieces and bits of green porcelain scattered through the table and the floor.

Meg pushed him off her and moved away from him, crawling back on the couch like Castiel’s touch suddenly burned her.

“What the hell?” she muttered.

Castiel knew exactly what was going on. He looked around, but though he could feel his presence everywhere, filling up the air like the electricity before a storm, he didn’t see him anywhere.

“I don’t…” he started, not sure what he was going to tell Meg, but she wasn’t even looking at him. She had shrunk on the other end of the couch, running her hands through her hair in distress.

“What the hell am I doing?” she said. “What the…? I need you to leave.”

She still refused to look at him. Castiel sat on the couch, desolate and confused for a moment.

“Meg, I didn’t mean to…”

“Leave. Please,” she replied. She stretched her hand to get her chair closer, while Castiel stood up.

“If I upset you in any way…” he started, but she shook her head.

“Just, go, Cas. Just… please go!” she said, gesticulating towards the door.

Castiel barely remember to grab his coat on the way to the door, feeling like he’d messed up big time. Once outside, he shivered and hugged himself, staring up at the clear night above his head.

His mind still couldn’t process what had happened. One second ago, he was lost in the glory of Meg’s lips, melting against her touch, and now he was standing in the cold, alone and disconcerted.

What had happened?

Where was Sam?

His question was answer a second later when he saw the ghost standing by his car. At first he didn’t realize it was him because… well, he looked different. Most of the times he’d seen Sam, he’d looked very much like the pictures of when he was alive. Now, however, he had an ashen face and bloodshot eyes devoid of any emotion that wasn’t rage.

That wasn’t the scariest part, though. That had to be the open wound on the side of his head that gushed what looked like fresh flood, traces of it trickling down his face.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

His voice boomed through Castiel’s ears, through his chest, through his stomach, leaving him paralyzed and frightened.

Despite this, despite his appearance, Castiel couldn’t bring himself to be scared. All those months he’d spent with him, all the things that Meg had told him, had got him feeling like he knew Sam and he knew that Sam, as furious as he was, wouldn’t hurt him.

Or at least he hoped so.

“Sam, let me explain…”

“I asked you to help her and this is what you do?!” Sam shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Castiel. “You take advantage of her when she’s vulnerable?!”

“That was not… I would never…” Castiel stuttered, but Sam wasn’t listening to him.

“SHUT UP!”

Sam raised his fist and Castiel jumped backwards. The ghost smashed Balthazar’s car, the passenger window cracking under his fist. There was almost nothing human in his glare, in the grimace in his face, when Sam turned towards him again.

He looked like something _unequivocally dead_.

“Stay away from her!” he warned him. “Stay away from us!”

He disappeared, but the coldness of his presence stayed with Castiel long afterwards.


	20. Confession

Castiel didn’t sleep a wink that night. He tried, but it was like Sam’s rage had chilled him to the bone and it didn’t matter how many blankets and hoodies he put on, he was still trembling underneath all of them. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Sam’s face, deformed by anger and he woke up with a jolt, his heart almost beating out of his chest, half-expecting to sense the ghost’s presence in the room, ready to attack him or at the very least to scream at him some more.

He was terrified and confused. He felt like Missouri’s warning about Sam’s possible deterioration was more urgent than ever.

But at the same time… he couldn’t help but to feel guilty. Was Sam right? Was he taking advantage of Meg after she’d come to him for comfort, for friendship? Were his actions not just not aiding Sam but actually making him even more worried about Meg and therefore anchoring him even more firmly to her?

Had he been selfish for kissing Meg?

At five in the morning, only three hours after Meg had unceremoniously kicked him out and Sam had broken the car’s window, Castiel decided his attempts at sleeping were futile. He stood up, went to the living room still wrapped with as many blankets as he could hold and sat in front of the computer with a notebook and a pen.

He probably should have done this much sooner, but he was determined to find out what his personal connection to Sam was.

Meg didn’t seem to use her social media much, if at all, and she only had a handful of friends whose names Castiel meticulously wrote down. He did the same with the names of all the people leaving messages in Sam’s memorialized page. Then he started going through all of them, one by one.

Most of them had public profiles, so he could go through their pictures and try to see if any of the faces clicked in his mind, if they were anyone he had known. Sam’s friends were mostly other lawyers and Stanford graduates he kept in touch with even after coming back to Kansas. Castiel had gone to an in-state college before he’d dropped out to look after Jack, so they definitely didn’t run in the same circles at all. He didn’t recognize any of the faces of the people in the pictures and none of the names rang a bell.

He started going through their family pictures next. Dean Winchester, who Castiel had only known because of what Sam and Meg had told him, had a picture of himself having breakfast with a kid and an attractive brunette woman. The Winchester brothers had a type, apparently. Dean’s most recent picture was one of him holding the hand of said woman as she showed a big diamond ring to the camera with the note: “She said yes.”

Several Campbell cousins were congratulating him in the comments. Mary Winchester said: “I am so happy for you. I wish Sam was here to see it.”

There was also no one in the Campbell family he knew.

He came across one Adam Milligan, which was listed as “Brother” in Dean’s profile. He had to be the secret half-brother they had found out about later. This seemed promising, as Adam’s occupation was listed as doctor and he had apparently worked at the same hospital where Castiel had had his heart surgery… until he realized Adam had been too young to even be an intern there at the same time Castiel was going through his issues.

So after four hours of cyber-stalking a bunch of strangers, he was back to square one. He hadn’t known Sam in life, he hadn’t been one of his clients, his store had no ties to the firm Sam had worked for, they had no common acquaintances. There was absolutely nothing that would justify him seeing his ghost. It would make a lot more sense for Meg or Dean or his mother or literally any of the people Sam had known in his life to see him.

By that point, Castiel was so exhausted that even if the Devil himself showed in his room to scream “Boo!” in his face, he would have just rolled over and fallen asleep. So he went back up to his room, disconnected his phone and was dead to the world for the next six hours.

When he woke up, it was too late to go to the group session. He wondered if Meg went.

He had no calls or texts from her. After staring at her name on his phone for what must have been ten straight minutes, debating whether he should call her or not, he put it down.

He didn’t even know what to say to her. Of course he wasn’t going to talk about Sam and how he had definitely not liked them kissing.

He didn’t know if Meg had regretted it. She had initiated things, yes, but the way she’d asked him to leave, the way she had even refused to look at him… did she regret doing that?

Would she even want to see him again?

He really wished he had someone he could talk about all of this with, but Anna would give her some annoyingly practical advice and Gabriel would mock him to no end. He was going not going to call Balthazar. Whatever he would hear at the other end of the line if he did was certain to be not just useless, but also traumatizing.

Finally, he landed on Missouri’s name.

“Seriously, boy?” she asked before he even said a word. “What are you even doing?”

It wasn’t a completely unfair question.

“Seriously?!” she repeated when Castiel confessed he had asked Meg out on Valentine’s Day and kissed her. “No wonder your ghost got pissed off! It must have felt akin to finding out someone you love is cheating!”

“Yeah, but he’s… dead,” Castiel pointed. “Is it… really cheating if he’s dead?”

“That’s irrelevant. He still _feels_ alive. He must feel too alive because he is pure emotion now and you’re contributing to making those emotions dangerously negative.”

“Okay. I get it. I messed up. How do I make it better?”

“I would start with an apology,” Missouri said. “And I would follow by finding out what your connection to him is.”

“About that…”

He told her all the information that he’d found out (all zero of it) and expressed his frustration at having no idea how to go on.

“Have you talked to the brother?” Missouri asked.

“Is your psychic instinct telling you I should?”

“No, my common sense is,” Missouri corrected. He could practically hear the eye-roll in her tone of voice. “Oh, and Cas? You should get an obsidian, just in case he gets out of control again.”

He didn’t like the warning tone in Missouri’s voice. He hanged up and bought an obsidian pendant from an Etsy account. He wasn’t sure if it was going to help at all, but it was better to have it than not.

* * *

Balthazar showed up at the store on Tuesday to go through some books, though what he really wanted to do was sit in the back office and tell Castiel all about the tear-filled goodbye he and Rowena had shared at the airport the day before.

“I stayed put, right as she went through security,” he said. “I was waiting to see if she would turn to look back at me, but she never did.”

“I’m sorry to hear about that.”

Balthazar sighed deeply, took out a flask from inside of his jacket and poured some liquor in his plastic coffee cup.

“To Rowena,” he said, gesturing for Castiel to toast with him. “She was the smartest, most beautiful, most captivating woman I ever had. And she had the most exquisite arse. I hated to watch her leave, but my, did I love to watch her go.”

Castiel laughed at the last comment. That definitely sounded more like Balthazar.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I supposed I will be,” Balthazar said, staring sadly into the distance. “That’s what we promised, that we would fine.”

Castiel had the impression Balthazar was lying to himself, but he didn’t press the issue. Five minutes later, he wished he had because Balthazar asked:

“Now, Castiel, darling, my dearest, closest, most beloved friend, can you explain to me why there’s a sticker in the window of my car?”

Castiel bit the inside of his cheek. He had been so sure he had removed it.

“Some… kids at Meg’s neighborhood… they threw rocks at it as a prank,” he said, hoping Balthazar didn’t remember that Meg lived in a HOA and that her neighbor would likely shoot any little troublemaker that was disturbing the peace like that. “The window broke and I had it replaced.”

But that was not what Balthazar focused on.

“Hang on, you went to Meg house and you were there long enough for someone to throw rocks at my car?”

Castiel saw no reason to lie, so he told him everything… well, except the part where the green mug exploded and a ghost had threatened his life, but he spared no detail except for those ones.

To his surprised, Balthazar congratulated him.

“Bravo, my good man!” he exclaimed. “I did not think you had it in you!”

“Did you not hear about the part where she kicked me out?” Castiel pointed out, confused.

“Yes, yes, that part.” Balthazar dismissed it with a gesture of his hand. “But you have gone further than I thought you would and that is certainly commendable. I dare even say that all is not lost just yet between the two of you.”

“Do you think I should… call her?”

“Absolutely not, that would be a mistake. Meg is probably overwhelmed by her emotions at this very moment and you calling her would feel like a bit of an invasion. Give her some time to actually miss you before you try approaching her again.”

“Huh.” Castiel tilted his head. “That is actually not terrible advice.”

“Well, of course is not!” Balthazar said, pretending to be offended. “I only give bad advice to my enemies.”

* * *

Meg didn’t call or texted him on Wednesday. Nor on Thursday, either. Castiel made sure by checking his phone every ten minutes and being disappointed every time.

At the same time, he couldn’t help a sense of… relief, almost. What was he supposed to tell her when and if they finally spoke again? What could he tell her? That he was keeping away because her dead husband was slowly going insane and would maybe hurt him if he tried to keep in contact with her?

At the same time… what guarantee did he have that Sam wasn’t going to lose himself enough that he would, voluntarily or not, hurt Meg herself?

The thought was enough to send him spiraling into anxiety.

On Friday, he arrived at the library where they had their meetings about fifteen minutes early, with two coffees, one for himself and one for Meg. He waited until literally the last minute and greeted everyone who came, one by one. He waited for five more minutes, then ten.

It was obvious that Meg wasn’t coming by that point. Sighing, Castiel walked in…

Only to see her already maneuvering her chair between Billie and Jo. She looked up at him, gave him a wary smile and then continued talking to Billie as the rest of the group gathered their chairs and placed them in the circle.

“Ah, Cas, is that for me?” she asked when he approached her and took one of the cups from his hand. “Thank you.”

She was acting like nothing at all had happened.

Maybe that was the best way to approach this. Castiel smiled back at them and went to pick up his own chair. He couldn’t sit by her side, but he managed to position himself opposite from her.

“Very well, who wants to share?” Billie asked, and as usual, people avoided her gaze for a few seconds. She sighed like a teacher disappointed that none of her children had studied the lesson. “Meg, would you like to start? You were pretty shaken last Friday and you didn’t talk much.”

“Yeah, I guess… I needed some time to process what happened.” Meg changed her cup from one hand to the other, fidgeted a little with the lid. She was pointedly not looking at Castiel as she began speaking: “So, on Valentine’s Day, I went on a date.”

The announcement caused some commotion around the group. The people who knew Meg’s story started looking around, surprised. Linda even leaned over to whisper something in Alicia’s ear.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. “It was this guy… named Clarence… that I’ve known for some time now. He is really sweet and patient with me and… I really, really like him.”

“Is he cute?” Jo asked.

“What is this, middle school?” Meg replied. “He’s smoking hot.”

Castiel hoped no one noticed how his cheeks were burning.

“Anyway, we were supposed to go out as friends,” Meg said. “I liked having the plausible deniability, you know? But we went to see a play, and then we went for dinner, and then we want back to my house. Anyone who’s ever heard of the concept of dates could tell it was a date.”

She made a pause to drink from her cup. The room seemed to be hanging on her every word. Castiel hadn’t realized her life was so interesting to everybody. He looked down at his shoe, trying very hard to not seemed like he wanted to hear this story, but at the same time… would it be weird that he was the only one who wasn’t looking up at her?

“Did you sleep with him?” Aaron asked.

“Aaron, please,” Billie scolded him.

“What? I’m just asking!”

“No, I didn’t sleep with him,” Meg clarified. She took a second to think about it. “But I would have.”

Castiel was so glad he wasn’t drinking anything at that exact moment.

“We, uh… we started making out,” she continued. “And it was… so good, you know? I haven’t been with anyone since Sam and Clarence, he’s just… man, he really seemed to know where all my buttons are.”

“Alright, we get the picture,” Billie said and Castiel silently thanked her because he was two seconds away from digging a hole in the ground, through the concrete, with his bare hands so he could hide away in mortification.

“Yeah.” Meg sighed. “But then in the middle of it, I just… started to feel bad. Not because of anything he did, just… this isn’t rational, but the thought that came to my mind was _‘What the hell are you doing? You’re married!’_. And it’s ridiculous because I’m _not_ married. And I know if Sam was somehow here, he would want me to be happy and find someone who loves me and all that jazz. I actually think he would’ve been friends with Clarence if he had met him. It’s just… I know, in my mind, that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. But it _felt_ wrong.”

“You felt guilty,” Billie said.

“Yeah. Hella.”

“So what did you do?”

“I asked Clarence to stop and kicked him out of my house.” Meg pinched the bridge of her nose. “And this is absurd, but the fact he actually left kind of make me like him even more. Something about a man who respects boundaries, am I right, ladies?”

There was a general murmur of agreement among the women of the group (and Max). Castiel exchanged a look with Aaron, who shrugged.

“But, uh… it’s been a week and he’s gone radio silence,” Meg continued. “And I’m afraid that I blew my chances with him.”

“Why don’t you call him?” Linda suggested.

“Yeah, and tell him what? _‘Sorry for being awkward as hell, I really don’t know what kind of relationship I want with you, please don’t stop talking to me’_.” Meg huffed as if all of that was a terrible idea, but then her features softened and this time, her gaze did fall on Castiel. “But I am sorry. And I really do like him. And I don’t want to fuck this up.”

“Our emotions aren’t rational, Meg,” Billie said. “I’m glad to hear that you’re putting yourself out there and that you found a person you feel you can start a new relationship with. It’s huge progress from your previous stage of denial and apathy. You don’t have to apologize for having confusing feelings, though. It’s a two steps forwards, one step back process.”

“Is there a way I can _roll_ through this process instead of taking steps?” Meg suggested, pointing at her chair.

Billie shook her head, but the rest of the group had a good chuckle at that.

Castiel raised his hand before he realized what he was doing.

“Yes, Cas?”

“Uh, um… just… speaking from a guy’s perspective,” he started, ignoring the knot that his stomach had suddenly become. “If he really cares about you… and I’m _sure_ he does, then you didn’t blow your chances with him.”

“Yeah?” Meg asked, in a soft tone that made Castiel’s heart flutter.

“Yes. And also, maybe the reason he isn’t calling you is because he wants to give you space. Because he knows you need time to clear your head and he can respect that. But also… I’m sure he’d be happy to know how you feel about him. I know I would. If I were Clarence.”

He bit his tongue a second before adding “which I’m not”. He felt like maybe that would’ve been a bit conspicuous.

Meg smirked at him.

“That’s good to know.”

Castiel smiled back at her.

And all the doubts and fears he’d been having for that week vanished.

“Alright, anyone else has something to share?” Billie asked.

After the session was done, Meg waited for him.

“Can you give me a ride home?” she asked, almost coyly, which was uncharacteristic for her.

“Of course.”

They talked as if nothing had happened, as if everything that really needed to be said had been said back at the library. They talked about the new podcast that Meg had found to listen to while she painted, they talked about the upcoming charity auction and about some terrible delivery people Castiel had to deal with because they took the furniture to the wrong address.

They laughed, like they always did.

Meg’s face became serious again when he parked in front of her house. He reached for the door handle to go pick up her chair as usual, but he halted when he felt Meg’s hand on his forearm.

“Cas, listen…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Castiel said, covering her hand with his. “It’s okay if you’re not ready. I can wait until you are.”

“Damn, what is this, a freaking abstinence PSA?” she joked, but a second later, she closed her eyes. The sigh she exhaled was one of relief, before she opened her eyes and stared at him again with those enormous eyes of her. “Thank you for understanding.”

And there was nothing else to say. Castiel brought her chair and watched her as she headed for the ramp he’d built.

“I still have no idea who Clarence is!” he shouted at her when she was about to close the door.

“I know you can watch a damn movie!” she shouted back with a laugh. “You have no excuse!”

She closed the door behind her and Castiel stayed where he was, leaning against his car and smiling to himself.

Well, right up until the point he noticed Sam’s silhouette in the window, staring right in his direction.

He turned heel as fast as he could, but of course, he could never outrun a ghost.

“Hey, man… what is that?” Sam asked, frowning.

Castiel hadn’t even realized he’d reached for the obsidian pendant and was holding it like it was a crucifix and Sam was a vampire it was supposed to scare away.

“It’s, uh… supposed to be ghost repellent,” Castiel explained.

He was half-certain Sam was going to laugh at him, but instead he closed his eyes and rubbed them with a hand. Could ghost get headaches?

He didn’t look like he was in pain, though. He was back to appearing like his normal “lively” self, and he almost seemed… ashamed.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said after a few seconds. “I don’t know what came over me. I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have threatened you like that. I just…”

He stopped for a second and looked up at the sky. Like he was searching for answers up there, somehow.

“This is all wrong,” he said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Sam…”

“What I said wasn’t true,” he continued, ignoring Castiel’s protest. “ _I know_ you’re not trying to take advantage of Meg. She is in a much better place now than when you first met her, and even if she wasn’t, you’re not that kind of person. I’m sorry.”

Castiel, slowly, put the obsidian pendant down.

“Why did you say it then?”

“Because I was mad and jealous and I wanted to find a way to blame you,” Sam explained. “I’m… jealous that Meg is falling for you. But I also know I have no right to be, because she has a right to move on. And it’s wrong that I’m here preventing that.”

Castiel was surprised at this revelation.

“I don’t think you are…”

“I’ve been staying away since she said she wasn’t entirely happy with our marriage, only checking on her occasionally,” Sam explained. “And she does so much better when I’m not around for long. She paints, she goes out with people, she even hums sometimes. She can’t see me, but she… senses me somehow, and her entire demeanor changes.”

“So that’s why I haven’t seen you,” Castiel said, understanding suddenly. “I was almost starting to think that you were… gone.”

Sam shook his head.

“I stayed with her this entire week and she was a mess. I know she meant to call you so many times, but then she would back down every time.”

“Well, I did the same thing. I don’t think that indicates…”

“Listen to me!” Sam snapped. “ _I should not be here_!”

The air around them became foggy and Castiel stepped backwards. He resisted the impulse to grab the obsidian again, because he didn’t want it to be like that. He didn’t want to “expel” Sam as if he was some random bad energy. He wasn’t. He was… Sam.

Sam took a second to calm down and when he did, his eyes had the saddest look Castiel had seen in anyone. Ever. It was one of pure desperation, of pure impotency. The look of a man who was well-aware that he was losing his grip on himself.

For maybe the hundredth time, Castiel pitied him.

“Okay,” Castiel agreed. “Okay. Tell me what you need.”

Sam thought about it for a moment, before he raised his head.

“I think it’s time you talked to my brother.”


	21. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: this chapter contains mentions of suicidal ideation and a mentioned suicide attempt.

March sneaked up on them while Sam and Castiel were planning their visit to Dean. According to Sam, they couldn’t just spring this on him. They needed a cover, a way to get him talking. He seemed obsessed with finding out what had happened at the hospital they night he’d died.

“That has to be the key.”

“The key to what?”

“I don’t know. The key to _something_.”

He was growing increasingly more impatient and agitated with every passing day, so Castiel really didn’t want to keep postponing the trip. But Sam insisted on telling him about his college days and quizzing him on them, because, even though he was supposed to be with Castiel as he talked to Dean in order to supply further information, “anything could happen”.

“I don’t have a hold of myself as much anymore,” Sam explained. He almost seemed embarrassed to give Castiel that information. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to be there with you the entire time.”

Castiel didn’t want to ask why he felt like he was slipping away. He already knew it.

So, after some moving around shifts at the store and making up an excuse not to hang out with Meg, Castiel finally himself driving up to Dean’s house.

“Remember…”

“Your mother gave me his address, told me I would want to talk to him, I know.”

“Good.”

“Don’t you feel bad about lying to him?”

“Were you always honest with your brothers?”

Castiel didn’t say anything because Sam had a point there.

Dean lived three hours away, in a fairly nice residential neighborhood. The houses weren’t as big as Meg’s and her neighbor’s, and Castiel was pretty sure that they didn’t have a HOA, but there were kids playing in the yards and people walking around their dogs. A nice place to raise a nice family.

“It’s right there,” Sam said, pointing at a one story house near the end of the street.

Castiel parked his car on the driveway, check himself in the mirror one last time to make sure there weren’t any suspicious stains in his shirt or that his hair wasn’t particularly messy (which he should admit by now was always going to be a losing battle) and marched towards the door.

He wasn’t expecting a barefoot teenager dressed in a faded band shirt and shorts, holding an extra big bag of Doritos and looking like he’d woken up five minutes before to answer the door.

“Yeah?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at Castiel, like he was judging him just for dare to exist in his space.

“Umh… I’m sorry, is this Dean Winchester’s home?”

Instead of answering, the teen went back inside as he screamed at the top of his lungs:

“Dad, it’s for you!”

“Ben,” Sam muttered at Castiel’s side. “Shit, he’s all grown up!”

“Your dad’s in the garage!” a female voice said. “Got get him! And don’t leave the guests at the door!”

Castiel stayed at the door anyway, because he felt awkward just barging into a home that wasn’t his own. The woman (the brunette that was in Dean’s pictures, Lisa) came up to the door and gave him an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry for my son,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Castiel reassured her as she walked in. “Kids, right?”

“You guessed it,” Lisa replied, rolling her eyes at the mess of cables and consoles abandoned in front of the TV. There was a CGI man on the TV, apparently killing zombies with a baseball bat wrapped in barbwire. She picked up some of the empty energy cans spread around and disappeared into what Castiel presumed was the kitchen.

Ben came back a few seconds later, swan-dived into the couch and resumed his game, plainly ignoring him.

Dean Winchester ran a hand through his son’s head, messing with his hair (“Ugh, dad!”) on the way to the door.

“Hello?” he asked, giving Castiel a suspicious look.

“Hi, umh… you don’t know me,” Castiel started. “But my name is Castiel Milton and I… well, I was a friend of Sam’s.”

“Oh,” Dean muttered and his entire demeanor change, like Sam’s name was the magical password to get him to lower his guard. He stepped forwards and shook Cas’ hand firmly. “Come on in. Can I get you… something to drink? Water? A beer?” He eyed Ben quickly and added in a whisper. “A Dr. Pepper?”

“Don’t touch my cans!” Ben shouted as he smashed the buttons, making the man in the screen swing the bat wildly to keep the zombies away.

“They’ll be your cans when you pay for them!” Dean shot back as he guided Castiel into the kitchen. Ben blew a raspberry in their wake. “Very mature, kid. I’m really sorry about him,” he added.

“It’s no trouble,” Castiel said, smiling. “He reminds me of my nephew.”

Well, he didn’t think Jack and Ben would’ve had a lot in common if they had met. Jack’s method of abstracting himself from the world was reading rather than videogames, but he was very possessive with his food. Especially with his sweets.

Dean apologized for the mess in the kitchen, even though for what Castiel could see, there was only some dishes that had been washed but not yet put away. He sat on the aisle and accepted a beer that Dean opened for him with his keychain.

“So, how’d you know Sam?”

“Umh… Stanford,” Castiel said, quickly glancing at the ghost who has hovering over Dean’s shoulder. “We weren’t really close, but I remember he was a good person, he was always willing to help others.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Sam,” Dean said, taking a swig from his beer.

“I left the country for some years. I just got back and I found out he’d passed. I’m sorry.”

Dean didn’t ask how he got his address or why he wanted to talk to him. Castiel had the impression he wasn’t the first person to show up at his door wanting to talk about Sam. It said a lot about him that he was even willing to entertain him.

“Yeah,” Dean muttered, fidgeting with his beer. “It sucks.”

“What happened? I read there was some sort of… car accident?”

“Yup. Truck driver had been taking triple shifts, fell asleep at the wheel,” Dean explained. “He only got two years because he technically hadn’t been drinking anything other than coffee. That’s ridiculous, huh?”

“It is,” Castiel said, surprised. Meg and Dean were going to have to deal with the consequences of what had happened for the rest of their lives, but this man had already gone out of prison?

“I know what Sam would’ve said though,” Dean continued, with a chuckle. “Poor bastard was just trying to look out for his family. We shouldn’t be too hard on him.”

Cas eyed Sam, who shrugged. It was true that he’d never expressed any sort of resentment or desire for vengeance against the guy who had killed him, just concern for him family, so Castiel was inclined to believe Dean was right.

“Hey, have you talked to Meg?” Dean asked. “I mean if you knew Sam back then, you also have to have known Meg. They were thick as thieves, those two.”

“I, uh…” Cas said, and noticed Sam vigorously shaking his head behind Dean’s back. “I did, but she didn’t seem very keen on… socializing.”

Dean nodded as if that was exactly what he expected to hear.

“Were you surprised to find out they go married?”

“Why would that surprise me?” Castiel asked. “As you said, they seem to have been… very close.”

“I don’t know, man,” Dean admitted. “I was surprised. I didn’t really like Meg.”

“Oh?” Castiel said, moving backwards in his chair. Sam also had his eyebrows raised, like he hadn’t expected Dean to just come out and say that.

“I thought she was a bad influence on my little brother,” Dean explained. “I congratulated him and I was his best man at the wedding and all of that, but I was lowkey waiting for it to go badly. So was my mom.”

“Did everyone but me know my marriage was destined for failure?” Sam asked. He seemed more annoyed than angry, so Castiel took that as a sign he wasn’t about to start making things fly.

“I didn’t think it was destined for failure or something like that,” Dean said, suddenly. “I just figured they had incompatible life goals, that’s all.”

Castiel blinked at him. Was Dean also somehow sensing Sam?

“I haven’t really talked to Meg in a while,” he continued. “I’ve seen her now and then over the years, but it’s just… I haven’t been the best brother-in-law, to be honest with you. We never exactly got along, but after Sammy’s death, well…”

Sam moved closer to him, suddenly very interested in what he was saying.

“What happened?” he asked.

“What happened?” Castiel repeated.

“We had a huge blowout at the hospital,” Dean explained. “Sam didn’t die in the accident, he had some sort of… brain damage thing. Don’t ask me the exact terms. He was still alive, but the doctors said that he wasn’t going to wake up no matter what. I didn’t want to believe it, I wanted them to keep him connected… but Meg had already called it. She asked them to wait until Mom and I got there so we could say goodbye, but she told them to just pull the plug afterwards.”

Sam’s eyes opened wide. He moved back to the isle and sat next to his brother.

“Dean… I never knew that,” he said.

“We begged Meg not to do it,” Dean continued. His charming, calm demeanor from before had melted away. What was underneath was a thick, formless sadness. Not even anger as he’d said, just… grief. “She wouldn’t budge. She said she knew Sam wouldn’t have wanted to live like a vegetable.”

“Crap.” Sam closed his eyes. “I did tell her that one time. No wonder he was angry, though, he probably felt like she killed me.”

“It felt like she’d killed him,” Dean said, almost at the same time. Castiel startled again. He’d seen that phenomenon happen with Meg sometimes and he wondered if it always happened around people who were, in a way, attuned to Sam’s presence somehow. “I couldn’t believe that she could have just let go of him so easily.”

“But she… she did what she could,” Castiel said. He didn’t know why, but he felt compelled to defend Meg, at least a little.

“I know that. I mean, I know it _now_ ,” Dean said, taking another swig of his beer. “Back then, though, I was just angry. At her, at the doctors, at the organization…”

“Organization?”

“Organ donor organization or the other, can’t really remember,” Dean said, rubbing his head. “Sam was an organ donor and some unlucky bastard needed his heart to live.”

Castiel didn’t hear the next thing Dean said, because the entire room was spinning around him. His hear – his borrowed heart – was beating hard on his chest right then and he unwillingly put a hand over it. The ticking bomb that had given him an extra decade to live, maybe more if he was really, really lucky.

Could it be…?

“… anyway, sorry to dump all of this on you,” Dean concluded, with a grimace. “My therapist keeps telling me I need to share more and whatnot, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear the Winchesters’ airing their dirty laundry. Well, not that Meg is a Winchester. She never changed her last name.”

“But she was family,” Castiel argued. “Sam chose her to be his family.”

Dean sighed.

“I guess he did,” he accepted. “Still, we eventually stopped trying to bring her into the fold. She obviously wants nothing to do with us and well, now that Sam’s gone, guess we don’t have to keep trying.”

Castiel eyed Sam, warily. One of the things that he’d said when they first making the list of things that would help him move on had been for Dean and Meg to reconcile, but that was looking like it wouldn’t be possible after all. Neither of them seemed interested in having a relationship with another and after what Dean had told him, after the resentment that he’d harbored towards Meg for such a long time, it just didn’t seem possible that they would ever be in better terms than they were now.

Sam seemed to be thinking the exact same thing. He put his hands on the table, looking ahead. Dean shivered and rubbed his arm, looking around until he spotted the open window.

“Is it chilly in here? I’m getting a bit chilly,” he commented and stood up to close it.

After a few seconds, though, Sam breathed out and the temperature around him went back to normal.

“That’s okay,” he said. “That’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Castiel mouthed.

“They were both my family,” Sam said. “But if they don’t want to choose to be each other’s family, that’s okay. They don’t need to be just because they feel… obligated.”

It was huge of him to be letting this go. Castiel almost told him he was proud, but Dean was coming back to the isle to finish his beer.

“Man, I feel like I’ve been talking your ear off,” he commented. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Cas?”

“Oh… well, there’s really not much to tell,” Castiel said.

He gave some clumsy stories about Sam and him, like how he had forced him to throw out his flavor packs one day (Dean had absolutely no problem believing that story), finished his beer and excused himself. By then, Ben had finished his game, or he had moved it to his room, because the living room was deserted.

“Drive safely,” Dean said, giving him a pat on the back as he accompanied him to the door.

“Thank you,” Castiel said.

He stopped for a moment at the door, however, hesitant. He really felt there was something else that Dean needed to know, though he wasn’t sure exactly how to tell him.

“Dean?” he called when he was about to get back inside. “I don’t think Meg really ever let go of Sam.”

A sad smile appeared on Dean’s lips.

“I don’t think any of us really did.”

With that, he bid him goodbye and closed the door. Castiel walked back to his car, still feeling a little dizzy for the revelation he’d just had.

Sam was having his own epiphany in the passenger seat.

“It’s fine,” he said again. “It really is fine. They both seem to be doing well on their own, so there’s no reason to force them to interact if they don’t want to. I mean, it would have been nice if they did, definitely, but it’s not something that can be forced, can it?”

“I guess not.” Castiel dared to glance at him instead of at the road for a second. “Sam, I need to tell you…”

“It’s completely okay,” Sam insisted, completely ignoring Castiel’s words. “You think it’s okay, right? That is for the best for the both of them?”

“Honestly, I think…” Castiel started, but he swallowed what he was about to say. He swallowed it because it was the equivalent of “I told you so” and Sam was already in an emotionally vulnerable place and he didn’t want to make him upset any further. “Yes, this is the best for the both of them.”

Sam almost sank on the seat. Or he would have, if he had any weight.

“Then… that’s fine,” he concluded. They travelled in silence for a while before he asked: “What were you going to tell me?”

“Right.” Castiel licked his lips. “Excuse me if this is a bit personal but… you died on the Fourth of July, right?”

“Actually I died the day after,” Sam said. “I always wondered why it said July 5th on my grave, because I was certain we weren’t in the car for that long, but now that I know what happened in the meantime… why are you asking?”

Castiel had to take a few seconds to regain his composure at that revelation.

“July 5th, three years ago going on four, is when I had my heart surgery,” he explained. “My heart transplant.”

Sam blinked at him and it didn’t take him long to piece out what Castiel was telling him.

“They called me early, they told me I needed to get to the hospital ASAP,” Castiel continued. “It was five in the morning, around the time you… would’ve been…”

“Disconnected,” Sam finished the sentence for him. “You… you think I’m your donor?”

“It would make sense,” Castiel said. “They told me during the process that first they would look for local donors before putting me in the national list, because that was a long shot. I mean, it explains why I can see you. Why you knew I had heart issues even though I never mentioned it. I actually have a part of you in me.”

He made a pause. Suddenly he made a little sick to his stomach.

“I’m alive… because you died.”

“Huh,” Sam muttered. “Umh… Cas… are you feeling okay?”

“No, not really…” Castiel said, and couldn’t add anymore before he had to suppress a heave that came to his throat.

“Woah, okay! Park over there. Breathe!”

Castiel managed to stop the car next the road, even though his hands were trembling violently and his legs were barely responding to his commands. While he was safely out of the way of anyone who might crash them, Castiel exited the car and walked a few steps, trying with all his might not to crash on the ground.

“Cas, hey, hey, hey!” Sam called him, coming after him. “What’s wrong? What’s…?”

“I am alive because of you!” Castiel repeated. “You died and you caused Meg and Dean and everyone who knew you all this pain and I… benefited from it! It’s not fair!”

“You didn’t benefit from it…”

“No?” Castiel opened his arms. “I’m still enjoying the company of my friends and my family! I met Meg and I fell in love with her! I am _alive_! And it was all because…”

“Some poor asshole had been driving for more hours than he’d been awake,” Sam said. “It was an accident. There’s no one to blame for it.” He moved closer to him. “And I’m certainly not going to blame you for accepting my heart.”

“But…”

“Listen to me: I wanted my organs to be donated precisely because of this,” Sam explained. “To give someone a second chance at life. And if what you choose to do with your life is… keep Meg company and be there still for your friends and your family, that’s fine with me.”

“You don’t even know why I needed a heart in the first place!”

“Because you had health issues, what difference does it make?”

“It makes all the difference!” Castiel shouted. He walked a few steps away and Sam, luckily didn’t come closer to him. He just hung back, waiting.

“Cas?” he asked after a few seconds.

“It was my fault,” Castiel said. He ran his hands through his hair. “It was my fault that… after Jack died, I was… in really bad shape for a long time, in and out of psych wards and… I started stockpiling my pills. I wanted to… end it. I couldn’t…”

Sam stared at him, his face shocked and confused.

“Cas… did you take them?”

“I did. But I started thinking how… disappointed Jack would be of me, so I made myself vomit and I called Balthazar to come help me. Turns out I still took enough of them to cause me a heart attack.” Castiel stopped and pinch the bridge of his nose. “I… lied. When they told me my heart was damaged and I needed a transplant, I lied. Balthazar lied too. We told them the overdose had been accidental and the fact I vomited the pills and called for help meant that they believed me. It they had known I had been trying to end my life, they never would’ve put me on the list, so we lied through our teeth. I didn’t think the heart would come, but then it did and I was… too selfish. Too much of a coward to turn it down.”

He walked up to Sam, because he wanted him to understand. He needed him to understand why this was all wrong.

“There’s probably someone out there who was more worthy of this heart than me!”

Sam stared at him silently, calmly, like none of the things Castiel had said fazed him at all.

“Maybe,” he admitted in the end. “But I can’t imagine who could that be.”

“Didn’t you hear me…?”

“I did,” Sam assured him. “I don’t care. I don’t think you’re unworthy just because you were in a dark place and did something stupid that you immediately regretted. Hell, if I had lost a son… because he _was_ your son.”

Castiel covered his face with his hands. He couldn’t hold back the tears anymore.

“And I think there’s a reason you accepted the heart,” Sam continued. “I think you did want to live.”

“I didn’t,” Castiel said. “I really didn’t. I just felt like I _had to_ , because…”

“Because it was the best way to honor the dead,” Sam said, like he had read his thoughts. “Not just Jack, but me too. Even though you didn’t know who I was.”

Cas’ legs couldn’t hold him anymore. He let himself fall on the grass by the side of the road, still holding his head in his hands. The chill by his side indicated him that Sam was hovering right next to him.

“Well, shit,” he commented.

“Yeah,” Castiel said.

He was still crying. He had never seen Sam cry, not even when he had been so hurt by Meg’s words. He had seen him angry, he had heard him laugh, but now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember a single instance of the ghost crying.

So once again, he did something for Sam that he couldn’t do: he cried.

The ghost stayed by his said the entire time.

“I would pat you in the back, but…”

“I know, I know,” Castiel muttered, between sobs. “Thank you. Sam, thank you so much. For everything.”

Sam’s smile was wide and warm.

“You’re welcome, man.”

A car passed them by, slowed down and stopped a few meters away from them. A young man, maybe in his twenties, exited from it and walked up to Castiel.

“Hey, mister, are you okay?”

Only then did it occur to Castiel how weird he must have looked, standing by the side of the road gesticulating and talking at the air, and now sitting there crying like a little child.

“I’m fine,” he told the young man, but he accepted the hand he extended to him to help him stand up. “Thank you. I’m okay.”

“You sure?” the young man asked, narrowing his eyes at Castiel. “We can give you a ride if your car isn’t working.”

“I’m fine,” Castiel reassured him. “I just felt a little light-headed and needed to stop for a second.”

The young man clearly thought he was being weird as all hell, but he was polite enough not to say it out loud.

“If you’re in no condition to drive, we can take you wherever you needed to go.”

“I think I’m better now. Thank you.”

The kid gave him another onceover, asked him again if he was sure and then walked away back to his car. Castiel stood by the road for another few seconds, breathing in and out slowly and looking at the now darkening sky.

“I feel like I need to call people,” Castiel commented. “Tell them how much I appreciate them being in my life. Is that ridiculous?”

“Not at all,” Sam assured him. “They’re what keeps us…”

His voice trailed off, but Castiel understood what he’d been about to say.

“Alive.”

“Guess that’s a bit ironic coming from me, huh?” Sam said, with a chuckle.

“No,” Castiel replied, shrugging. “I don’t think it is at all.”

He couldn’t explain just why, but Sam had become as important to him as any of them now. He looked at the ghost, who was wearing a bit thin now, his skin a bit transparent.

“You know, I think Meg was right,” he said. “I think we would’ve been friends.”

“I’m not so sure,” Sam shot back and smiled at him. He disappeared as he said: “I think we are friends either way.”

* * *

Meg managed to finish five paintings for the Spring Charity Auction.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” she told Bess when she showed up at her house with her husband to pick them up. “I haven’t painted in a while and it was kind of slow work…”

“Oh, Meg, please, you don’t need to worry about it!” Bess said, looking at the canvasses with a glint in her eye. “These are beautiful! We’ll get a lot for them, I promise you!”

Meg wasn’t so sure. They were pretty simple paintings, really, a couple of abstract splashes of color, one of Sam’s rose bush in full bloom, some landscapes with a sunrise or a sunset. Nothing particularly inspired or controversial.

But Meg still felt proud of them as Garth and Bess wrapped them up and took them outside to his truck.

“I didn’t know you painted,” Garth told her. “And much less that you did it this well.”

“Well, you know… I kind of stopped after the whole… accident thing,” Meg said. She thought the Fitzgerald were going to look super awkward just by the mention of it, but they both nodded as it what she was saying made all the sense in the world. “I’ve just been trying to get back into it, little by little.”

“That’s great. I think the world might need artists like you, Meg,” Garth commented.

It was a complete platitude but Meg appreciated it for what it was nonetheless.

“I wish I could paint like you,” Bess said. “I’m sure it’s a great way to relieve stress.”

“Yeah… maybe,” Meg said, a little disconcerted.

To her painting was a lot more than that, of course, but this past couple of months, since she’d given up her job, it had been something to keep her mind and hands occupied whenever she felt like she had nothing to do in her home and the usual sadness started creeping up on her. And of course, it had been a welcome distraction from thoughts she sometimes didn’t want to have, like after the whole Valentine’s Day fallout.

Maybe it could be like that for other people as well.

Garth closed the trunk of their car and smiled at Meg once more.

“We’ll see you at the auction, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Meg assured her and then lied through her teeth: “I’m looking forwards to it.”

She hated even thinking about going, but what was she going to do? Bess had been extremely nice to her and the least Meg could do was support her endeavor to help the poor and whatnot.

She rolled back into her house after the Fitzgeralds drove away and she felt… immediately empty. Like, she had finished all the paintings for the auction, which was in two days. She didn’t have time to start a new one. Even if she started a new one, what it would be for? Another auction? Could she make enough to go around the neighborhood like a deranged Easter bunny giving away paintings? Could she bribe the HOA with some art? And when every single person in the neighborhood already had one of her paintings, what then?

The idea of painting for herself didn’t even cross her mind. She was not at that stage just yet. Maybe soon she would be, but not right then.

She made herself some tea and sat down on the couch. Her eyes darted immediately to the corner of her coffee table, where Sam’s mug had sat, only to remember that it wasn’t there anymore. She’d thought about putting another of his mugs there, but what would be the point of that, really?

For some reason, however, she didn’t feel like she could talk to Sam the way she used to without some sort of physical anchor of him to keep her gaze. She could go upstairs and take one of his shirts, but honestly… she felt a little weird doing it. Billie and Mia would tell her that it didn’t matter, that everyone had their own way of grieving and no one had the right to judge her, etc., etc.

But Meg still felt like she was doing a strangely unnecessary thing. Like, if she wanted to talk to Sam, she didn’t need an object to represent him. He either was there or he wasn’t and it didn’t make a difference if she had a physical reminder of that.

Which, of course, meant that she had been holding on to his things for absolutely no reason.

She sighed. That was not the conclusion she wanted to arrive to, but it was definitely the only one that really made sense. She moved back to her chair and up into the stairs lift. She rolled down the hallway and opened the doors to Sam’s studio.

The dust accumulated from… it was going to be almost four years now jumped at her, making her sneeze. She could barely fit her chair into the crowded room. Some of Sam’s associates had come to take away boxes from his current open cases that they needed, but the crates where he kept the papers from the old ones were still piled up against the walls. Meg maneuvered to get behind his desk and placed a hand on the empty space.

Castiel would like it. It was made of shiny mahogany. He could transform it into something different or maybe keep it the way it was.

And, of course, she would need someone to donate all of Sam’s law books to. And his clothes. And…

She could maybe keep some of his jackets. She wondered if Dean would want some of them too. She grimaced just imagining the conversation, but it would be kind of a dick move to get rid of Sam’s stuff without asking if he wanted to keep some of it.

She started opening the drawers of the desk, to see if there was anything there that she would consider keeping.

One thing called her attention immediately.

It was a wooden little box, almost like a jewelry box. When she placed it on the desk and opened it, she discovered it was full of photographs.

Photographs of Dean as a little kid holding baby Sam. Photos of Mary smiling in her garden. There was even one of John Winchester, even though Sam never got along with his dad to begin with.

There was a couple of herself. One was on their wedding day. Sam looked so handsome in his tuxedo, with the white flowers on the lapel, that Meg looked downright awkward next to him in the white long-sleeved dress, veil and bouquet. Anyone who had said she was a glowing bride would have been lying. Still, it was clear that Sam had liked the picture enough to keep it there.

The second one was of Meg sitting on the window’s ledge, with a ball of white fluff in her lap that she presumed was Machiavelli, maybe a few years before she had to put him down. She was barefoot and wearing just Sam’s shirt, which was so oversized on her that it looked more like a gown on her. She was looking away towards the window, with a hand sinking in the cat’s fur. She didn’t remember having that picture taken and she had no idea which year it had been. It had to be in their old apartment, but she couldn’t know if it was before or after Sam moved in with her for good.

When he proposed, just a couple of months after they’d agreed to only be with one another, he’d told her he’d known for some time that it had to be her. That it had always been her.

They were in the apartment. Sam had cooked dinner and bought some alcohol. Nothing fancy or elaborate, maybe knowing that a big public proposal was a surefire way to get her to say no. He’d just slid the ring box towards her over the table as he talked about how much she meant to him.

“You’re my best friend,” he’d said. “You’re my family. Meg, I know you said marriage is stupid and maybe I’m stupid for wanting it, but… would you share your life with me?”

“Sam, you idiot,” Meg had said, shaking her head to hide away the tears that had suddenly filled up her yes. “I’m already sharing my life with you and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. We don’t have to get married to do that.”

“Maybe not,” Sam had agreed, with a laugh. “But wouldn’t it be great, though?”

Meg wasn’t sure about great. But she knew it was going to make him happy and what the hell? It wasn’t like a piece of paper saying they were married was going to change the way they felt about each other. So she’d said yes. Of course she’d said yes.

And he’d kept those pictures in the same box he kept pictures of his family. Despite Meg’s reticence to participate, despite the obvious distrust from the Campbells and the Winchesters, despite her doubts and her hard edges.

Meg never knew how to be anyone’s family. Her mother left, her father was a manipulative bastard and her brother was a loser. But she’d had Sam.

She wiped her cheeks quickly, as if she was ashamed that anyone was going to see her cry. But even as she got out of the studio and turned off the lights in her wake, she already knew what she needed to do.


	22. Purpose

“You look fine,” Balthazar promised Castiel. “Don’t worry about it, Meg said it wasn’t that formal.”

Castiel still felt a little too informal and kept touching his tie as they walked towards the community center’s door. They were wide open and there was a warm golden glow coming from the inside. He heard the rumor of chatter and laughter and wondered if Meg was doing okay. They were running a little late and he knew she wasn’t always happy with these sorts of social events.

It turned out he didn’t really need to worry. When they came in, Meg was chatting happily with a couple of her neighbors. They all had plastic cups in their hands and she was laughing and looking up at them. He stopped for a second at the door to admire her, because that was apparently what he was always going to feel compelled to do now. She’d said it wasn’t formal, but she looked stunning in her palazzo and crossed blouse. Her hair was floating freely over her shoulders and her smile…

She looked to the side, as if she had sensed his presence and her eyes met his. They lit up, and she immediately gestured for him to come closer. He was always happy to do just that.

“Ladies, as I was telling you,” she said, as the women around her turned to look at Castiel. “This is the friend who has been helping get things in order around my house.”

Castiel hadn’t quite believed Meg’s stories about all the women in the neighborhood having a crush on Sam and hitting on him, mainly because Sam had denied it vehemently. But now, in front of all them at the same time, he felt intensely scrutinized and analyzed, eyes going up and down his outfit, eyebrows being raised and glances exchanged. He noticed at least two blonde women nodding to each other before one of them stepped in and extended his hand.

“Yes, we’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Milton,” she said, with a big wide smile. “I’m Beverly LaCroix, from the Connecticut Lacroix. I was wondering if maybe you’d be available to do some repairs in my house…”

“Well, I am no repairman,” Castiel said, with an awkward laughter. “But if you have a piece of furniture you’d like to fix or restore…”

“Oh, I can think of some pieces, yes,” Beverly said. Her smile made Castiel nervous for some reason.

“Meg, I have to tell you, your paintings are lovely!” a woman with short, curly brunette hair said.

“Thanks, Amelia,” Meg said, with a little shrug.

“Oh, yes, our Aunt Bunny said she studied art with you when you were giving classes here in the center,” the other blonde woman said. “Do you think there’s a chance you’ll be doing that again? Because I would love to take classes with you!”

Meg blinked rapidly, and if Castiel had missed that, he never would’ve been able to tell the suggestion had taken her by surprise.

“You know, I’ll have to think about it, Heddy,” she told her. “I’ve only got back into it recently. And anyway, I thought you were heading back to Connecticut soon?”

Heddy fidgeted with her drink, passing it from one hand to the other and looked away as she spoke:

“Well, it appears our stay in Aunt Bunny’s state will be longer than we expected. Me and my sister would love to have something to distract ourselves with, though.”

Why did she wink an eye at Castiel? These women were very strange, because she immediately smiled at Meg again and added:

“Like an art class, for example!”

Meg smiled back at her, but Castiel had the impression her lips and shoulders both tensed up as she did:

“Yeah, I’m… currently exploring my options.”

“That’s good to hear, because your talents shouldn’t remain hidden!”

Someone called Heddy and Beverly to the other side of the room and Amelia excused herself to go find her husband, so Castiel finally had the chance to speak with Meg alone.

“Absolutely no way in hell I’m doing that,” Meg said, lowering her voice.

“It could be a good option. Didn’t you use to teach art to seniors and…?”

“Yes, exactly why I’m never doing that again,” she declared. “I did my time. I’m not desperate for money. I can be picky with what I do with ‘my talents’.” She drew air quotes with her fingers and Castiel laughed.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Yes, please. Food and drink is the best part of this place, even though there’s no freaking alcohol. I would kill for a beer right now.”

“We can go have one afterwards, if you want.”

“Please. I’ll die.”

Their way to the table where the snacks were was slow, because several more people stopped Meg on the way to congratulate her on her paintings. They either expressed their surprise at the fact Meg painted, like they had never heard of her doing this before, or they asked her over and over if she was considering teaching again. Meg thanked them for the compliments and told them over and over that she was thinking about what her next step would be.

“What will your next step be?” Castiel asked her, and jokingly put an invisible microphone in front of her face. “What will the wonderfully talented Meg Masters do next?”

To his surprise, Meg didn’t continue the joke. Instead, she grabbed his hand, made him stretch his fingers and left a kiss on the spot where the palm of his hand became his wrist.

It was such an intimate, soft gesture, that Castiel was completely stunned for a moment.

“I don’t know,” Meg told him, intertwining her fingers with his. “But I do hope you’ll be there to discover it with me.”

Her words threw him for a loop. He knew, of course, that they had feelings for each other, though mostly they had gone unacknowledged for a while, that they were treading new ground with a lot of care for whatever this little thing between the two was. He knew that Sam, despite having found out what tied him to Castiel and being almost sure that everyone he cared about was going to be fine, was still hanging around and that could make things awkward and complicated.

But all those concerns and confusing questions vanished in thin air. All that really mattered was the warmth of her hand on his, the way she smiled up at him. Because she had asked him a question, in her own particular way, and he needed to answer it now.

“I think… there’s no other place I’d rather be,” he told her, and gave her hand a quick squeeze.

They didn’t have time to say anymore because a scrawny looking man (who Meg introduced as Garth) came along passing around the auction paddles.

“It’s about to start,” he told them. “Good luck.”

“Hello, everyone and thank you very much for coming to this auction charity in favor of Little Angels,” a woman Meg identified as Bess Fitzgerald said from the stage. “This charity is dedicated to help families with children battling cancer with their medical expenses.”

Castiel turned towards Meg, who gave him a simple smile and shrugged. She’d told him the proceedings would go to a charity, but she hadn’t mentioned which one. A lump crawled up to his throat once again.

“We’re starting with this flower vase that has been generously donated by the LaCroix sisters,” Bess announced, as two men hoisted a long white monstrosity up on the stage. “We’re starting at one hundred. Do I hear one hundred and ten and sixty…?”

People didn’t bid much on the overpriced vase or the china set that followed it. There was a little bit more interest in the wooden dish cabinet he and Balthazar had donated and a few other items, but people were growing increasingly impatient and it was obvious that Bess was saving what had been the talk of the night for the end.

Meg’s paintings were the last item to go up on the stage. That entire time, Meg had been holding Castiel’s hand tightly, but when she saw her paintings go up on the stage, her grip became even tighter. The first two to go up were the abstract ones.

“We’re starting the bid at two hundred for the set… oh, I see we have two hundred and ten… two hundred and twenty…”

The price just kept scaling up to seven hundred and fifty dollars.

“That’s insane!” Meg muttered to Castiel, her eyes wide open, but what happened with the second set of paintings was exactly the same thing: the price quickly climbed and climbed and the two landscapes were sold for nine hundred dollars. Castiel thought the price was still a little too low for Meg’s talents, but she kept shaking her head and saying these people were crazy for wanting to pay so much for them.

The fifth painting, the one that showed a familiar rose bud in all of its glory, was when things got really, really heated. Apparently, now that people knew it was the only one that was left, they were not willing to let it go. The paddles were going up almost faster than Bess could keep up with them.

“One thousand dollars! Do we have one thousand and fifty?”

The LaCroix sisters kept raising their paddle every single time the price went up again, and so were (to Castiel’s surprise) the Richardson. Meg didn’t even try to hide her astonishment.

“That can’t be right,” she kept muttering under her breath. “Come on, this is… this can’t be happening…”

“Fifteen hundred!” Bess announced. Her eyes were shining bright, like she also couldn’t believe this was what was happening. “Do I have sixteen hundred?”

Amelia tugged from her husband’s sleeve, but Don shook his head, with a deep frown in his perpetually angry face. The LaCroix sisters smiled at one another, greedily, when Bess started counting:

“Going once… going twice…”

“Two thousand dollars!” a voice came from the back.

Everybody turned to look at him. Castiel was shocked to see Balthazar raising his own paddle. He hadn’t bid on anything all night, almost like he had been waiting for that moment to come.

“What?” Beverly LaCroxi screamed.

“Would the ladies like to match that offer?” Bess asked.

Heddy became tight-lipped and extremely angry, but she shook her head.

“Sold!” Bess announced after no other paddles went up. “And that was the last item of this auction! Ladies and gentlemen, we are so pleased to announced we have raised a grand total of ten thousand dollars!”

There was a close applause and even some cheers. Bess seemed delighted as she went down from the stage and starting shaking hands and thanking everyone for their assistance.

“Balthazar, what the hell?” Meg asked him, when he approached them.

“The pictures of your paintings went up on the page that announced the auction,” Balthazar explained.

“And?”

“Rowena liked this one,” he explained, as he showed his phone’s screen to them. “So I bought it for her.”

There were several problems with that logic, not the least of which were…

“Balthazar… Rowena is back in Scotland,” Cas reminded him. “And I thought you’d agreed…”

“I am well aware of what our original agreement was, thank you very much,” Balthazar said, raising his chin. "But I have since decided that agreement is bull and I will be voiding it in the most romantic, dramatic way."

"Why?"

"She has had a faculty meeting with Louis," Balthazar explained, wrinkling his nose as if just the name of the man made him feel sick. "Back in the summer of 2014, she and Louis where briefly engaged, but that ended when Rowena discovered that he was having an affair with Olivette. So I can't allow her to make the mistake of giving him a second chance."

"And you know all of this because...?"

"Castiel, please," Balthazar said. "They have Internet in Scotland."

"Right," Castiel said, in the flattest tone of voice he could manage. "How did I not think of that?"

"Anyway, my flight to Edinburgh, that I have just booked, leaves tomorrow morning and of course, I cannot show up empty-handed when I go see her. So I purchased Meg's beautiful painting to present to her as a gift."

"Well, of course," Castiel said.

He wasn't even going to ask how much money was he pouring in between the painting and the plane ticket, but he figured it made entirely too much sense for Balthazar to go through the most extreme route to get Rowena back. He was such a fiercely loyal friend that it came as absolutely not a surprise that he was just as willing to go to extreme lengths for the first woman he'd loved, as far as Castiel was aware.

"Anyway, if you don't mind, I only have a few hours to get some rest before my flight. I'll pick up the painting and go home to pack some few essentials. You don't mind taking an Uber, don't you, Cas? Goodnight, Meg, and thank you so much for the invitation."

"Godspeed, you beautiful crazy man," Meg said as Balthazar turned around and strutted confidently to claim his purchase. She exchanged a look with Castiel and as if on cue, they both began laughing once again.

"Man, I wish my life was half as interesting," she commented.

Castiel agreed. Even with ghosts and dramatic revelations, Balthazar's drama seemed to be in a whole other level from them.

They stuck around for another hour, drinking and making small conversation with the neighbors that came to Meg to congratulate her and also to express some disappointment that they hadn't had the chance to buy one of her paintings.

"Maybe next time?"

"Maybe," Meg said, with a shrug.

No one seemed fazed by her noncommittal answers.

The first night of spring was beautiful and calm, so when Meg announced she was ready to leave, Castiel immediately accepted her offer to take a stroll to her home instead of calling for an Uber or catching a ride with the Fitzgeralds. She pushed the wheels of her chair with leisure, like she didn't have a hurry in the world and Castiel took slow steps by her side.

The empty streets of her neighborhood were empty and only some houses had light on the windows. Castiel imagined most of the people had been at the auction, while their children had long been put to bed by their babysitters or caretakers. Parents would start coming back home now, kissing the little ones goodnight and going to bed while commenting the night among themselves.

He didn't envy them, in the sense that he didn't envy the families they had, but he did envy the normalcy they were probably enjoying, the completely mundane thoughts that were probably running through their minds. They didn't have to think about death and spirits every night, they didn't have to redefine themselves and their purposes every time they had a bad day. They simply went on with their lives as usual, keeping all the possible tragedies that could befall them hidden away behind a barrage of positive thoughts and feelings, the same way the light of their night-lamps kept the monsters in the shadows away from them.

Meg and him were different, in that sense. They were different in that they knew these small happy lives could be derailed in no time. They were different in that they knew what living with ghosts was like.

He thought about commenting this to Meg, but they were somewhat bleak thoughts and Meg seemed happy, smiling to herself and lost in her own chain of thoughts as the wander through the streets heading towards her home. They stopped at a corner and Meg looked up at the sky for a second or two.

“It’s a beautiful night, eh, Clarence?” she commented, with a peaceful sigh.

And Castiel figured they could leave the talk about ghosts for another moment in time.

“It is,” he agreed. And he placed his hand on her shoulder blades. Meg didn’t seem bothered at all by this small, simple contact.

Unsurprisingly, she asked him in when they arrived at her place, to have a cup of coffee, and of course, he accepted. It couldn’t be any other way.

He was a bit surprised to find boxes piled up all around the living room.

“What’s all this?” he asked. “You started your spring cleaning early?”

“I’ve been watching some videos of this Japanese lady that teaches people to clean and whatnot,” Meg commented from the kitchen. “I’ve been… sorting through Sam’s stuff.”

“Oh,” Castiel murmured and looked around.

The ghost was nowhere to be seen. Castiel didn't think he was gone, though of course he couldn't really be sure of that. He knew now that if it was in Sam's power, he wouldn't just leave without saying goodbye.

But he wasn't there at that moment, so it was impossible for him to gage what he thought about Meg doing this. Was he happy that she finally seemed to be taking steps to physically recognize his absence? Was he angry that she was just getting rid of it all?

When Meg came into the living room with the platter on her lap, however, the answer made itself clear.

"I called Dean and he agreed to take some of these things off my hands," she said. "We agreed we're donating the clothes and books. He's taking all of Sam's pictures and his desk. Says his kid needs it for the new computer he's planning on buying."

"I see," Castiel said. "You could... I mean, if you want me to help you..."

He didn't finish the phrase, because he realized all of the sudden how awkward it would be if ever crossed paths again with Dean Winchester. He would have to essentially confessed that he had lied about knowing Sam and who he was and what his relationship with Meg was.

Meg shook her head.

"I appreciate it. You know I always appreciate it," she said. "But this is something that we have to do ourselves. You understand, right?"

"Yes," Castiel said, nodding. "Of course I do."

Sam had belonged to them. One of the big problems Meg and Dean had was that they couldn't decide which one of them had loved him more, they couldn't tell which one of them was trying to do right by them. It was good that they realized that they both were, in their own way, and forgave the differences that had lead them to hate each other in the first place.

"Anyway, once Sam's office is clear I'm thinking into turning it into a guests' room," she continued, shrugging. "You wouldn't have to crash on the couch the next time we stay up late together."

"I would appreciate that," Castiel said, nodding. "Well, if you need furniture... like a bed or a boudoir…"

"Oh, I know a pretty good carpenter." She took a sip from her coffee. "You think Balthazar will be back from Scotland by then?"

Castiel laughed. What else could he do?

They sat on the couch together, but they didn't immediately put on a movie. It seemed, for some reason, that they still have a lot of things to talk about that particular night.

"This is like, a big process for me," Meg said. "I'm lucky I can focus all my time and energy on it, but I really have no idea what I'm going to do afterwards."

"Hopefully not going back to working at the call center," Castiel commented

"You wanna give it a rest?"

"No, never," he declared and she punched him in the bicep, but it was so gentle that he had to laugh once again while she shook her head at him, as if he was the one who was ridiculous for that entire conversation. "But there's a whole host of possibilities of what you can do next."

"Really, like what? Feed into the LaCroix sisters’ delusions that they can do anything they put their minds to? That whatever shitty thing they do with my pencils and my canvasses that they won’t pay me back for is worth framing and hanging on the wall of the mega mansion they’re going to buy with late Aunt Bunny’s money?" Meg rolled her eyes. "No, thank you."

That was an incredibly specific example and Castiel wasn’t going to ask how she came up with it.

"You could go back into teaching," Castiel suggested.

"Yeah, I don't know," Meg said, with a shrug. "My patience was thin when I was a happy, well-adjusted person. I don't think I'll have the spoons to deal with a bunch of kids with more enthusiasm than talent now."

“You could become a reclusive artist and sell your pieces for hundreds of dollars every single month,” Castiel pointed out.

“Wouldn’t that be fun?” Meg said. She finished her coffee and shook her head. “No. I am done being a recluse. I think I need to go out, interact with people more, or I’m just… going to lose my mind.”

She made a pause and stared at the bottom of her little cup.

“But not too much interaction, because that would be exhausting.”

“Well, of course.”

“Just the perfect amount of interaction,” Meg continued, nodding to herself as she did. “And then I get to come home and not deal with people until the following day again.”

“Sounds like a very reasonable plan.”

Meg leaned back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling for a long, long time.

“Maybe I could go back to school,” she commented. “As like, a student.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Castiel said. “What would you study?”

“I don’t know. Something tangentially related to what I already do, I guess,” she said, with a shrug. “Something… I’ve been thinking a lot about what Sam was trying to do. He was so generous with everyone. He always wanted to help people. And then you showed up and helped me a lot, out of the goodness of your heart. No, I mean it,” Meg said when Castiel opened his mouth to tell her she didn’t need to thank him for that at all. “I have been given so many wonderful things, despite it all. I want to… I don’t know, pay it forwards? Does that make sense?”

Castiel smiled at her.

“It makes all the sense in the world.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Meg concluded with a shrug. She put her cup down and moved one her legs over the other. She leaned back on the couch and smirked at him. “So…” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“So?” Castiel repeated, a little confused.

“I think you and I need to have a little chat,” she said. “Because the neighbors are definitely going to talk about us after tonight.”

“Oh,” Castiel said, understanding suddenly what she meant. They had probably seen them holding hands and leave together. “Well… hopefully they’re not going to brand you with a scarlet letter.”

“Hopefully not. But I still need to find something to tell them when they ask me what you are to me.”

Castiel swallowed. Had she inched closer to him why he wasn’t paying attention? Or maybe he felt like she was closer because he was suddenly hyperaware of her again?

“Meg,” he started, taking in a deep breath. “You know how I… feel about you. But I don’t want you to think that I would ever pressure you into anything you don’t want or you’re not ready for and…”

Meg’s hand came to rest on top of his. Soft like a butterfly. Castiel’s words trailed off when she started drawing circles in the back with her thumb, slow and almost lazily.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she said. “The thing is… I’ve been wondering how the hell am I supposed to know if I’m ready or not.”

“Well…” Castiel started, but realized almost immediately that he really didn’t have an answer to that question.

“After I graduated high school and got the scholarship for Stanford, when I realized I wouldn’t have to stay with my schemer of a father anymore, I took everything I wanted to take with me, I put it all in my car and I drove all the way to California. Classes wouldn’t start for another ten weeks, but I figured, what the hell, I might as well go, find a job, rent a place. I had absolutely nothing figured out,” Meg said, laughing. “But I just knew that I had to get out of there and face it all. I didn’t have time for hesitating, you know what I’m saying?”

Castiel could almost see it. A young, bold Meg, flying down the roads in her car, heading out for a new life. Even now he could see some of that bright-eyed kid, in the way she smiled at him, in the artists’ hands that held his, so tightly.

“Then I met this great guy and we were both a little confused as to where it might lead, and I decided to just kiss him,” she said.

Of course, she was talking about Sam. She had to be. The story about how they met at a party and shared a few beers and…

She was inching ever closer to him and as usual, Castiel stopped thinking about anything that wasn’t her, her face, her warmth, the shape of her mouth. It was like she filled every inch of space between them and he couldn’t really think straight when she did that.

“I didn’t know if I was ready. And, in fact, I got scared. But you know what?” She put her other hand on his cheek and gently pulled him closer to her. “I felt the same way I did when driving to California. Scared. But excited. And I didn’t need to be ready to go for it. I don’t need to know if I’m ready now. We can give it a go and… we’ll see.” She squeezed his hand and smiled again. “But I want this, Cas. I want you.”

Castiel’s chest swelled listening to her words. Simply because they were perfect. Simply because they were everything he’d been expecting to hear.

She didn’t give him time to answer. Maybe because she really didn’t need one. She placed her lips over him and the rest would sort itself out.


	23. Epilogue: Light

They stopped the car in front of the cemetery gates. Castiel went around to get her chair for Meg and then kept a hand on her back as they walked up to them. It was a warm summer afternoon; the sun fell down in the horizon as the moved through the graves to get to Sam’s.

A full year. Meg could scarcely believe it. It had been a full year since she’d been there, found Dean and fought with him. A full year since she’d learned about the support group and how that had changed everything.

They stopped in front of Sam’s grave.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” Castiel asked.

He’d done so when he’d come to her the first time, in May, for Sam’s birthday. Meg had sat in front of the grave for a long time, feeling like she needed to explain to Sam that he was always going to be important to her, that he was always going to have a place in her heart. The fact she was in love with Castiel, and with him, didn’t change that. Almost like she was trying to apologize to him for falling in love with someone else.

But as she did, she’d realized none of that was necessary. If Sam was there, he’d understood it. He would never hold it against her. And he wouldn’t be bothered if Castiel stayed with her in front of the grave for a little while.

“It’s fine,” she said.

She moved to the tombstone to leave the usual rose. She noticed the flower crown on the side. Dean had been there earlier. It was a good thing they didn’t run into each other. Meg truly felt like she had nothing else to say to him, not since the last time when he’d been at her home.

It had been very tense when he’d showed up and walked in, but then, as they went about classifying Sam things, putting them away, separating what each wanted to keep and what should go to charity, the awkwardness had subdued a little.

“Well, I guess that’s everything,” Dean said.

“I guess it is,” Meg had shrugged.

She’d accompanied him to the door and watched as he put the boxes on the trunk of his Impala. She knew it was a Chevrolet Impala, couldn’t remember the year, because she had heard Dean ranting about it plenty of times before at family reunions.

It felt weird thinking she wouldn’t have to ever listen to that again. There was a finality to that moment that permeated the air.

Dean must have felt it too, because before he took the last box away, he stopped to look at her for a moment and hesitated.

“Can I ask you something?” he’d said, because he must have suspected it would be the last chance he would get to do it. “How did you know?”

“What?”

“That it was the right thing to do,” Dean explained. “Just… letting him go.”

Meg thought about telling him to get the hell out of her porch just because of how difficult that question was, but she supposed she owed it to him.

“I didn’t know,” she’d admitted. “I know you think it might have been easy because I had already made up my mind when you showed up…”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it wasn’t,” Meg had continued, ignoring his protest. “I questioned myself so many times, if I was doing the right thing. I didn’t want to let him go, but… I tried to do what Sam would’ve wanted me to. He would’ve wanted to give up his life if it could save someone else’s.”

Dean had reflected on this for a moment.

“Yeah. He would’ve wanted that.”

He’d given her an awkward goodbye and rushed to his car. Meg had waited on the porch until he’d disappeared around the corner. Maybe she would run into him again, but never would they have anything important to say to one another. It was a sobering thought.

She told Cas about this conversation with Dean.

“I’m sure you did,” Castiel assured her. “Saved someone’s life. Even if they didn’t know that they would want to be saved.”

“I’m not even sure what that means,” Meg said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Castiel assured her, with a smile. “I get it.”

He got in those weird moods now and then. Meg was getting used to them, to his silences, to the quiet way he had of just being there. They still had those lengthy conversations that she enjoyed so much, because it didn’t feel like she had to pretend or hold anything back. It felt easy. It felt simple.

She couldn’t for the life of her remember why she had been so hesitant before.

The first night they’d spent together, she was practically trembling.

“I don’t know how this is going to go,” she’d warned him. “I don’t know what I’m going to feel… if I’m going to feel anything. It really might not go the way either of us are expecting…”

Castiel had kissed her on the forehead as he’d held her tight against himself and then sank his face in her neck.

“We’ll figure out,” he’d old her. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”

They had figured it out, eventually. That first night, however, Meg had to ask him to stop. He’d done so and then held her while she cried. He’d then stood up and brought her tissues and a glass of water. Then he’d got in the bed with her, wrapped his arms around her and fallen asleep with his face in her hair.

It had been that night when Meg had realized something.

“I love you.”

She’d said weeks later. They were in bed again, in his place. He’d put a ramp on his own porch, like he was expecting her to be there every single day, like it was a given that she would be. Of course, she wasn’t going to ask him to invest in something as complicated as a stairs lift, but the simple fact he’d thought about her enough to put a ramp there had been enough to prompt her to say out loud what she’d been thinking about for a while now.

Castiel was half-asleep, but he’d stirred awake when she spoke.

“What was that?”

Meg could have backed down. She could have said it was nothing and he needed to get back to sleep, and a part of her, the part that still didn’t like that he’d got so close without her permission, the part that was prideful and arrogant and insisted she didn’t need anyone, wanted to do just that.

But Meg’s bravery had won. She’d turned over on the bed so she could see his face as she spoke.

“I love you,” she’d repeated.

His soft, groggy smile was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.

“I love you, too.”

So there she was now, on another anniversary of her husband’s death, on a house that would soon stop being hers. The classes started in September and her commute to and from them were going to be much shorter in the apartment she had rented in the city. She didn’t have the heart to sell Sam’s dream house, not just yet, but she had rented to a group of young people that Castiel had put her in contact with.

“It looks perfect,” Claire had said, putting a hand around her girlfriend’s waist. “We’re going to have fun, aren’t we, babe?”

“I think so, yeah,” Kaia had replied, with a smile.

They were also bringing in two other roommates. They were all young, hard-working girls that would stick out like a sore thumb in the neighborhood. Claire had a very noise motorcycle to go to and from work.

Don was going to hate them. They were the perfect tenants.

But they wouldn’t move in for another month, so for now, Meg was still packing her things and decided what she wanted to take to her new place, a new small apartment that looked a lot like that one she’d live in soon after graduating.

Two steps forwards, one step back.

Castiel was spending as much time as he could with her in the meantime.

“Now that Balthazar is staying with Rowena for good and leaving me some of his business, I’ll have my hands full with work and you’re going to be busy becoming a therapist.”

“An art therapist,” Meg corrected him. “Like, not even a real one.”

Castiel smiled and leaned to kiss the top of her head.

“We should really take advantage of the time we have now.”

She was aware that he was technically right, but she couldn’t imagine how being apart from him some days was going to change… anything of what she felt every time she thought about him.

She loved him so much it hurt her heart sometimes.

He hadn’t moved in exactly, but he spent more time there than at his own place. That also felt natural: to have his things in the drawer, to peer down from her studio’s window and watch him going in and out of the garage as he worked on his latest project, to roll over in bed every morning and find him quietly snoring by her side.

She knew, of course, there was a time before Castiel came into her life, a time in between Sam’s death and this point, but she couldn’t remember what that time had been like. It had been like she had been frozen in place and she was slowly but surely thawing now. Her life was beginning again. She had a new purpose, a new impulse, a new person by her side to support her unconditionally.

She had never even imagined it would be like this, to have something to look forwards to, to have a reason to get up from bed every single morning.

“This is what you want, right?” she would ask him sometimes. “You’re okay with having a long distance relationship with a disabled woman that still cries unprompted at least once a week?”

“First of all, it’s only mild distance and we’re going to be seeing each other every weekend,” he pointed out. “I would rather see you all the time, but I think what you have chosen to do is amazing and I’m trying to be a supportive boyfriend about it. And yes, of course, this is what I want.”

“But you would tell me if it wasn’t?” Meg insisted. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to ask this, she just knew that she needed to hear it. “If you ever need something else from me, if you ever feel like I’m not giving you enough, you’d tell me.”

Castiel’s smile was so soft as he grabbed unto her hand to leave a kiss on her knuckles.

“Of course. And I trust you would do the same.”

Meg couldn’t even imagine him ever asking more of him.

There were still bad days, of course. But compared to where she was a year before, she felt like she had reached some sort of summit after a long, intense climb.

And she felt at peace. She thought she had been fine before, but now she realized being just fine wasn’t the same thing as being at peace. It wasn’t the same thing as being happy. “Fine” didn’t make her heart thrum as she watched Castiel moving around the kitchen, nodding his head along to his favorite R&B artist, while he made a “healthy dinner” for the two of them.

“What is it about me attracting all the health nuts?” she commented, when he proudly presented her with a vegetable tart made with gluten free flour.

“I think I need to start taking care of this heart a little better, now that it’s mine,” Castiel explained, with a shrug. “I mean, I am still going to indulge now and then. But I just want to be more… mindful.”

Meg had seen the scare his operation had left him with. She’d traced it with her fingers and placed her lips on top of it. It scared her to think that if anything had gone wrong then, she wouldn’t have met this wonderful man, let alone had him in her life for the long run.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” she told him.

After dinner, they washed the dishes together and went upstairs. Some nights, Meg would let him carry her in his arms. It was nice, to feel herself protected like that, but she was trying not to let herself get excessively spoiled, so she took the stairs this time.

Castiel snuggled against her in the bed and left a kiss on her shoulder.

“How are you doing?” he asked her.

Meg intertwined her fingers with his.

“I’m fine,” she said. And for the first time in a really long time, she really meant it.

* * *

Castiel stirred in the middle of the night. He didn’t know why. Usually he slept like a log all through the night, but now he felt awake and alert, even though it was four in the morning and the sunrise was still at the very least an hour away. Meg slumbered by his side, peaceful and quiet. He tried to close his eyes and go back to sleep, but for some reason, his brain refused to shut down again.

“What is it?” Meg mumbled groggily when she felt him move.

“I just need to go to the bathroom,” he told her, leaving a peck on her temple. “I’ll be right back.”

She mumbled something but was immediately fast asleep once again.

After he relieved himself and washed his hands, he figured he felt a bit thirsty as well. He walked past the outline of the stairs lift and walked down into the living room…

He shivered. It was a warm summer night, so he was wearing nothing but his boxers and a very thin shirt. He hadn’t been cold a second before, but now there were goosebumps all over his arms, as if he’d walked into a fridge all the sudden.

He knew immediately what this was. It had been months since he’d felt his presence, months since he’d last talked to him. There hadn’t been any cold spots or things moving on their own. A part of him had been sad that he hadn’t said goodbye, but he figured that maybe the ghost didn’t have control of that sort of thing. He’d assumed he was simply… gone.

It appeared he was wrong.

“Sam?” he called out, almost in a whisper.

He appeared on the couch, sitting there with his shoulders slumped.

“Hey,” he said.

He looked the same as he had always, but he seemed to… glow. In the darkness of the living room, Sam’s figure was illuminated, as if a reflector was falling directly on him.

“Where have you been?” Castiel asked. “You… I haven’t seen you since…”

“I know,” Sam said. His voice was very calm. “I’ve been… trying to stay away, to give you and Meg privacy. I spent some time checking in on my mom and my brother, but they seem to be doing… okay.”

“That’s… that sounds great. That was what you wanted, right?” Castiel asked. The ghost didn’t answer, so Castiel took a step closer to him. “Sam, is everything…?”

“Yes. I, uh… I see a light.”

Castiel didn’t know how to answer to that. He looked around, but of course, there were no lights on in the lower floor.

“It’s golden and warm and it’s… floating right there in front of me,” Sam said. “It’s weird, like everything around it bends when it touches it. It’s hard to put into words; it’s like… a rip in the fabric of the universe. I’ve seen it for some time now. I think I’m supposed to go in there.”

“How do you know that?”

Sam shrugged again. Apparently it was impossible to explain even for him.

“Sam… that’s what we wanted, right? For you to be able to leave? To move on?”

“Yes, I know. And… I… can’t explain how I know these things, but this isn’t going to be open for me forever.” Sam sighed. “All this time, I’ve been waiting for like… something to come and pull me away, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. I have to make a choice to go through it and if I don’t… if I stay here…”

He was rambling now and gesticulating wildly, like he knew exactly what he was seeing and what he was feeling, but he couldn’t put them in words that Castiel could understand.

Castiel understood anyway.

“You have to choose to let go.”

Sam looked down at his shoes and clenched his jaw.

“How can I do that?” he asked. “How can I just leave them?”

Castiel went to sit by his side. He really didn’t know how to answer that.

“Sam, it’s… Meg will never suffer because of me, if I can prevent it.”

“No, I know that. But, it’s not just her, is… everything. It’s everyone. How am I supposed to let go?”

Castiel thought about this for a second.

“I don’t know,” he admitted in the end. “All I know is what Missouri told me. If this is truly a door that will eventually close for you, you know what will happen if you choose not to go through it. You will lose yourself. You will go insane. Even with my help, even with me reminding you of who you were, you will eventually not be Sam anymore.”

Sam slowly turned his head towards him. His expression was one of pure anguish, like he didn’t really want to hear what Castiel was telling him, but it was inevitable for him to.

“I think… you owe that to them. And to yourself. I can’t guarantee that they will always be fine, that they won’t have moments when they won’t wish you were there with them. But that can only happen if you go to that light and remain the Sam they knew and loved.”

Sam rubbed his face. There were no tears in his eyes, but his face was contorted as if he was about to cry.

“I don’t know what’s on the other side. I don’t know if there’s some sort of… heaven or hell or if I’ll just… disappear.”

“You’ll never disappear,” Castiel promised him. “Not for the people who loved you. Meg, Dean… me. We will always remember you.”

Sam closed his eyes. He still looked sad, but Castiel’s words were maybe the last push he needed. He nodded his head and stood up, looking straight ahead.

“You’re right.” He stopped and smiled at Castiel one last time. “Of course you’re right.”

He still hesitated in the middle of the living room a moment longer, looking around as if he was saying goodbye to the house he’d lived in for so long, the home he had chosne to build. He turned towards Castiel again.

“Thank you for everything.”

He took a step forwards and Castiel realized with a pang there was still something he needed to tell him.

“Sam. If you see Jack…”

“I’ll tell him,” Sam assured him.

Castiel found it hard to smile, but he tried it anyway. He didn’t want the last face Sam saw as he moved on wherever he was going next to be one of sadness.

Sam smiled back. Then he turned around, straightened his shoulders and stepped forwards.

It wasn’t like the other times when he’d disappeared in the blink of an eye. Castiel thought he saw something this time, something different. A glimpse of something golden, like that of a car passing through the window, or maybe the breaking dawn’s seeping in.

It was there and gone in a second, a fraction of a second.

But it was enough to punch the air out of his lungs.

He still didn’t believe the Heaven his father had preached about was right, a Heaven where only those who had been righteous and followed all the rules could enter. No, that light hadn’t felt it was judging anyone. It felt warmth and welcoming.

It felt like love.

He didn’t realize he was crying. He took a second to calm down. Maybe there was something beyond death that he never could’ve suspected, something beyond his grasp, but that he knew now he shouldn’t be afraid of.

When his time came. For now, he was there, and he needed to go back to bed with his girlfriend.

In the morning, his encounter with Sam almost felt like a dream, like it hadn’t happened in reality. Had he really woken up in the middle of the night? He never did that.

He would have to ask Meg. He had just finished preparing two mugs of coffee when he heard the whirring of the stair’s lift that announced that she was awake and coming down. He smiled to himself.

“Good morning…” he stated as he stepped out of the kitchen, but he immediately realized that something was wrong.

Meg was looking around, a confused expression on her face. She opened and closed her mouth several times.

“Did you… do something here?” she asked in the end, frowning at him. “Did you move something?”

“No,” Castiel promised her. “Why would I do that?”

Meg turned around and went to the dining room, only to come back almost immediately.

“There’s something different here,” she insisted. “Like… something is missing, something is… gone. Am I…?”

Sam.

It didn’t hit Castiel until the tears starting rolling down Meg’s cheek that she had been living with him in some capacity for the last four years. She couldn’t explain what it was, but she must have known. She must have felt it.

Castiel put the mugs aside and knelt in front of her, placing a hand on her cheek.

“Meg?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Meg said, breathing in slowly as her crying became more copious. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know why this is happening.”

“It’s okay,” he promised her. He threw her arms around her and pulled her in to hold her as tightly as he could. “It’s going to be okay, Meg.”

“I don’t _feel_ him here anymore.”

The words shocked Castiel enough to move back away and look at her face.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she said, still sobbing. “I think Sam is gone. _Truly_ gone, this time. It’s crazy. He’s been gone all this time, but I always felt like he was still with me, somewhat. No I… can’t…”

Castiel brushed the hair off her face and smiled at her.

“It’s not crazy,” he assured her.

“It’s not?”

Castiel thought about it. Sam had asked him not to tell her, he’d told him that meg wasn’t going to believe him. Maybe some things were still going to be incredible, but she needed reassurance. And he needed to come clean to her.

He squeezed her hand.

“I have something to tell you. You might find it hard to believe,” he started. “But when you said Sam and I would’ve been friends? You were right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


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